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y 



Worh by the Author and Translator of this Volume^ 
Recently Published: 
I. THE IDEAL IN ART. 
II. ITALY {ROME AND NAPLES). 
in. ITALY {FLORENCE AND VENICE). 

With the fa'vor of the public^ the foUoiving ivill^ in time, be 
issued : 

I. THE PHILOSOPHY OF ITALIAN ART. 
n. THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART IN THE LOW 
COUNTRIES. 
Ill A neiv edition of THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. 
IK ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

Leypoldt & Holt, Publishers, 

451 IBrooixie Street, Ne-w York. 



ITALY 



FLORENCE AND VENICE 



H-. 



i>p1^ 



FROM THE FRENCH OF 



J-v^- 



h'^ T a I n e 



BY 



V 

J . D U R A N D 





NEW YORK 

LEYPOLDT & HOLT 

I 869 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 

LEYPOLDT & HOLT, 

In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States for the 

Southern District of New Yo k. 






^ 



S!^ 



Stereotyped by Little, Rennie & Co., 
645 & 647 Broadway, New York. 



OONTE]srTS, 



BOOK I. 
PERUGIA AND ASSISI. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

FROM ROME TO PERUGIA.— THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA.-THE APEN- 
NINES.— SCENERY 1 



CHAPTER II. 

PERUGIA.- PRODUCTIONS, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS OF THE 
EARLY RENAISSANCE.— MYSTIC ART.-FRA ANGELICO.— PERU- 
GINO.— LE CAMBIO.— THE VALLEY OF PERUGIA 6 



CHAPTER III. 

ASSISI.— VILLAGES AND THE PEASANTRY.— THE THREE CHURCHES. 
—GIOTTO AND DANTE.— CONCORDANCE OF CHRISTIAN MYSTI- 
CISM WITH GOTHIC ART.— AN ENTHUSIASTIC IMAGINATION 
COMPATIBLE WITH BARBARISM 16 

CHAPTER IV. 

POLITICAL CONDITION.— DIFFICULTIES AND RESOURCES.— DISPOSI- 
TION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS.— PREDOMINANCE AND PROGRESS 
OP THE CONSTITUTIONAL AND LIBERAL PARTY.— SYMPATHY 
BETWEEN ITALY AND FRANCE.— INCON^T^NIENCES AND AD- 
VANTAGES OF MODERN CENTRALIZATION 28 

CHAPTER V. 

FROM PERUGIA TO SIENNA.— ASPECT OF SIENNA.— TRANSITION 
FROM A REPUBLICAN TO A MONARCHICAL SYSTEM.— MEDIE- 
VAL MONUMENTS.— THE CATHEDRAL.— ITALIAN GOTHIC ARCH- 
ITECTURE.— NICHOLAS OF PISA.— EARLY SCULPTURE.— APPRE- 
CIATION OF FORM IN THE RENAISSANCE 40 



IV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER YI. 

PAGE 

THE ORIGIN OF PAINTING AT SIENNA AND PISA.— CREATrVE EN- 
ERGY IN SOCIETY AND IN THE ARTS.— DUCCIO DA SIENNA.— 
SIMONE MEMMI.— THE LORENZBKTI.— MATTEO DA SIENNA .... 49 



HITECIT 



FROIVS^ FLORENCE TO PISA.— SCENERY.— PISAN ARCHITlXITURE. 
THfi' DUOMO, LEANING TOWER, BAPTISTERY, AND q^MPO- 
SANTO.— PAINTINGS OF THE XIV. CENTURY.— PIETRO D'ORVIE- 
TO.— SPINELLO SPINELLI, PIETRO LORmZETTI, AND THE OR- 
CAGNA.— RELATIONSHIP OF THE ART 'OF THE XIV. CENTURY 
TO ITS SOCIETY.— WHY ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT REMAINS 
STATIONARY 55 



BOOK II. 
FLORENCE. 



CHAPTER I. 

STREET SCENES.— FLORENTINE CHARACTER 71 

CHAPTER H. 

THEATRES.— LITERATURE.— POLITICS.— IN WHAT RESPECT THE 
IT^lLIAN differs FROM THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.— THE 
PJ^^NT IN RELATION TO THE NOBLE.— THE LAYMAN IN RE- 
LATION TO THE PRIEST 76 

CHAPTER HI. 

THE PIAZZA.— REPUBLICAN SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.— 
STREET FRAYS AND FAMILY FEUDS.— THE PALAZZO-VECCHIO. 
CONTRAST BETWEEN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE MONU- 
MENTS.— THE DUOMO.— MIXED AND ORIGINAL CHARACTER OF 
THE ARCHITECTURE.— THE CAMPANILE.— THE BAPTISTERY.— 
ITALY REMAINS LATIN.— PRECOCITY OF THE RENAISSANCE.— 
BRUNELLESCHI, DONATELLO, AND GHIBERTI 84 



BOOK III. 
THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE EARLY PAINTERS.— THE BYZANTINES.— CIMABUE.— GIOTTO. - 
FIRST EVIDENCES OF THE LAIC, ITALIAN, AND PAGAN SPIRIT. 
—THE SUCCESSORS OF GIOTTO.— ART AT THIS EPOCH REPRE- 
SENTED IDEAS AND NOT OBJECTS 



CONTENTS. Y 

CHAPTER II. 

PA6B 

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.— TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY AND 
IDEAS.— PUBLIC PROSPERITY AND USEFUL IN^T:NTI0NS.— LUX- 
URIOUS TASTES.— MODERN^CONCEPTIONS OF LIFE AND HAP- 
PINESS.— THE HU3IANISTS.— THE POETS.- THE CARNIVAL.— A 
NEW CAREER OPEN TO THHftVRTS.-THE GOLDSMITH, THE PRO- 
MOTER OF ART.— ART NO LONGER REPRESENTS IDEAS, BUT 
CREATURES.— PERSPECTIVE WITH PAOLO UCCELLO 108 

CHAPTER III. 

PORTRAITURE OF ACTUAL FORM: MODELLING AND ANATOMY 
WITH ANTONIO POLLAIOLO AND VEROCCHIO.— CREATION OF 
IDEAL FORM WITH MASACCIO.— ORIGINALITY AND LIMITS OP 
ART IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.— FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND 
GHIRLANDAIJO.— THE SURVIVORS BOTTICELLI 120 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE CONVENT OF SAN MARCO.— BEATO ANGELICO.— HIS LIFE AND 
WORKS.— PROLONGATION OF MYSTIC SENTIMENT AND ART... 131 

CHAPTER V. 

THE UFFIZJ COLLECTION.— THE TRIBUNE.— ANTIQUES, AND RE- 
NAISSANCE SCULPTURE.— DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GREEK ART 
AND THE ART OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.— MICHAEL AN- 
GELO.— THE MEDICI CHAPEL /. 138 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE PITTI PALACE.— THE :MEDICI MONARCHY.— MANNERS AND 
CUSTOMS OF THE COURT.— PROMENADES AMONG THE PAINT- 
ERS. -ANDRE A DEL SARTO AND FRA BARTOLOMEO.— THE SPIMT 
AND INFLUENCE OF FLORENCE IN ITALY 151 



BOOK IV. 
FROM FLORENCE TO VENICE. 



CHAPTER I. 

FROM FLORENCE TO BOLOGNA.— THE APENNINES.— BOLOGNA.— 
STREETS AND FIGURES.— WOMEN AND THE YOUNG.— LOVE.- 
SAN DOMENICO.— THE TOMB OF SAN DOMENICO.— SAN PETRO- 
NIO.— .TACOPO DELLA QUERCIA.-^OHN OF BOLOGNA.-END OF 
THE RENAISSANCE 160 



VI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTEK II. 

PAQB 

THE PINACOTHEA.— RAPHAEL'S ST. CECILIA.— THE CAEACCI.— 
STATE OF SOCIETY AND OF ART DURING THE CATHOLIC RES- 
TORATION.— DOMENICHINO, ALBANO AND GUIDO ITO 

CHAPTER III. 

FROM BOLOGNA TO RAVENNA.— LANDSCAPE.— PEASANTRY. -THE 
TOMB OF THEODORIC— RAVENNA.— BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. 
- SAN APOLLINARE AND ITS MOSAICS 179 

CHAPTER lY. 

CHARACTER OF THE CIVILIZATION OF CONSTANTINOPLE.— CHANGE 
AND ABASEMENT OF THE SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC SPIRIT.— SAN 
VITALE, ITS ARCHITECTURE AND MOSAICS.— JUSTINIAN AND 
THEODORA.— THE TOMB OF PLACIDIA 186 



CHAPTER Y. 

FROM BOLOGNA TO PADUA.— ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY.— PADUA.— 
STATE OF SOCIETY IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY AND OF 
ART IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.— SANTA MARIA DELL' ARENE 
AND THE WORKS OF GIOTTO 197 



CHAPTER YI. 

PADUA, CONTINUED.— SAN GUISTINA.— SAN ANTONIO.— THE SCULP- 
TORS AND DECORATORS OF THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH 
CENTURIES.— THE MUNICIPAL SYSTEM COMPARED WITH THE 
EXTENDED GOVERNIMENTS OF MODERN TIMES.— THE ADVAN- 
TAGES AND DRAWBACKS OF CONTEMPORARY CIVILIZATION.. 



BOOK y. 

VENICE. 

\ 
CHAPTER I. 

FROM PADUA TO VENICE.— THE LAGUNES.— PROMENADE IN VEN- 
ICE.— THE GRAND CANAL.— THE PIAZZA DI SAN MARCO.— THE 
DUCAL PALACE.— " VENICE, QUEEN," by PAUL VERONESE.— DAY 
AND NIGHT LANDSCAPES ON THE SEA.— SQUARES, STREETS, 
FIGURES AND CAFES 217 



CONTENTS. VU 

CHAPTER II. 

PAGE 

ANCIENT VENICE.— PROLONGATION OF THE MUNICIPAL SYSTEM.— 
ORIGINALITY AND RICHNESS OF INVENTION IN SMALL FREE 
STATES.— THE RENAISSANCE OP ARCHITECTURE.— SAN MARCO. 
-IMPORTATION AND TRANSFORMATION OF THE BYZANTINE 
STYLE.— MOSAICS AND SCULPTURES 231 



CHAPTER III. 

SAN GIOVANNI E PAOLO.— I FRARL— THE MAUSOLEUM OF GUAT- 
TEMALATA.— MONUMENTS OF THE DOGES.-THE SPIRIT OF DI- 
VERSE CENTURIES AS STAMPED ON SCULPTURE.— THE MIDDLE 
AGES, THE RENAISSANCE, THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, AND 
THE MODERN EPOCH.—" ST. PETER MARTYR," BY TITIAN.— TIN- 
TORETTO 



CHAPTER IV. 

PROMENADES.— SANTA-MARIA DELL' ORTO.-SAN GIOBBE.-LA GUI- 
DECCA.— I GESUATL— I GESUITL— MANNERS, CUSTOMS AND 
CHARACTERS.— MISERY.— PUBLIC SPIRIT.— IDLENESS AND REV- 
ERIE AT VENICE 251 



CHAPTER V. 

THE LATTER DAYS.— EPICUREANISM.— CANALETTI, GUARDI, LON- 
GHI, GOLDONI AND GOZZL— THE CARNIVAL.— LICENSE.— THE 
LIDO.— THE SEA.— THE TOWER OF SAN-MARCO.— THE CITY, THE 
WATER AND THE SANDS 262 



BOOK VI. 
VENETIAN ART. 



CHAPTER I. 

CLIMATE.-TEMPERAMENT.-ART, AN ABSTRACT OF LIFE.-MAN IN 
THE INTERVAL BETWEEN HEROIC AND DEGENERATE ERAS.. 272 



CHAPTER II. 

THE EARLY PAINTERS.-JOHN BELLINI.— CARPACCIO.— VENETIAN 
SOCIETY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.— UNRESTRAINED VO- 
LUPTUOUSNESS.- DOMESTIC ESTABLISHMENT OF ARETINO.— 
SENTIMENT OF ART.— COLOR INSTINCTS 



TIU CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER III. 

PAGE 

THE DUCAL PALACE.— CHAEACTEES OF THE DAY.— THE ALLEGOR- 
ICAL PAINTINGS OF VERONESE AND TINTORETTO.— THE RAPE 
OF EUROPA 294 

CHAPTER IV. 

TITIAN, HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER.— HIS WORKS IN THE ACAD- 
EMY.— "THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN," AND OTHERS.— 
SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE.—" THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM." 
— " CAIN AND AEEL."— THE WORKS OF BONEFAZIO, PALMA-VEC- 
CHIO AND VERONESE 301 

CHAPTER V. 

THE CHARACTER ANT) GENIUS OF TINTORETTO.— THE " MIRACLE 
OF ST. MARK."— THE SCUOLA OF SAN-ROCCO.— THE "CRUCIFIX- 
ION."— GENERAL IMPRESSIONS 312 



BOOK YIL 
LOMBARDY. 

CHAPTER I. 

VERONA.— THE AMPHITHEATRE.— CHURCHES.— LOMBARD STYLE OF 
ARCHITECTURE.— THE DUOMO.— SAN ZENONE.— THE SCALIGERS. 
—THE PIAZZA.— THE MUSEO 328 

CHAPTER II. 

LAGO DI GARDA.— MILAN.— STREETS AND CHARACTERS.— THE CA- 
€ THEDRAL.— MYSTIC FIGURES AND VEGETAL ANALOGIES OF THE 
GOTHIC— SAN AMBROGIO 342 

CHAPTER HI. 

THE LAST SUPPER OF LEONARDO DA VINCI.— CHARACTER OF HIS 
PERSONAGES.— CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS GENIUS.— HIS SCHOOL. 
— LUINI.— THE BRERA MUSEE.— THE AAIBROSIAN LIBRARY.. .. 350 

CHAPTER IV. 

COMO AND THE LAKE.— SCENERY.— THE CATHEDRAL.— ITALIAN 
* ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE IN THE FIFTEENTH CEN- 
TURY 361 



CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTER V. 

PAGB 

FROM COMO TO LAGO MAGGIORE.— DEVOTION. -EPICUEEANISM.- 

^ THE PEASANTRY, BOURGEOIS AND NOBLES.-POLITICAL DTSPO 

SITIONS.— THE NECESSITIES OF ITALY.— LAGO MAGGIORE.— 

iSOLA MADRE.— ISOLA BELLA.— SCENERY.— ART AND NATURE.— 

THE ALPS AND THE SIMPLON 367 



ITALY, 



BOOK I. 



PERUGIA AND ASSISI. 



CHAPTER I. 

FROM K0:ME to PERUGIA.— the ROMAN CAMPAGNA.— THE APEN- 
NINES.— SCENERY. 

I LEFT Eome at five o'clock in tlie eYening ; I had 
not yet seen this portion of the Campagna, and I will 
never see it again for my ot\ti pleasure. 

Always the same impression — that of an abandoned 
cemetery. Long monotonous hillocks succeed each other 
in interminable rows, like those seen on a battle-field 
when the great trenches are covered over in which the 
dead lie heaped. Not a tree, not a stream, not a hut. 
In two hours I saw but one round cabin, with a pointed 
roof, like those found amongst the savages. Even 
ruins are wanting. On this side there are no aque- 
ducts. At long intervals we encounter an ox-cart ; 
every quarter of a league the sombre foliage of a 
stunted evergreen bristles up by the roadside, the 
sole living object, a forlorn straggler lost in the soli- 
tude. The only trace of man is the fences bordering 
the highway and traversing, far and wide, the undu- 
lating verdure, in order to confine the flocks during the 
season of pasturage. At present, however, all is barren, 



a PEEUGIA AND ASSISI. 

and the sky expands its divine cupola over the funereal 
waste with mournful, ironic serenity. The sun declines, 
and the fading azure, growing more limpid, tinges its 
crystal with an 'imperceptible hue of emerald. No 
words can express this contrast between the eternal 
beauty of the sky and the irremediable desolation of 
the soil. Yirgil, in the midst of Eoman pomp, already 
first indicated the merciful contemplation of the gods, 
who, under Jupiter's roof, looked down amazed upon 
man's miseries and strifes.^ 

I cannot rid my mind of the impression that here is 
the sepulchre of Eome, and of all the nations she de- 
stroyed — ItaHans, Carthaginians, Gauls, Spaniards, 
Greeks, Asiatics, barbarian populations and enlight- 
ened cities. All antiquity, indiscriminately, lies buried 
here under the monstrous city which devoured them, 
and which died of its surfeit. Every verdant undula- 
tion of the soil is, as it were, the gTave of a distinct 
nation. 

■ Daylight is gone. In the moonless night, the mis- 
erable post-houses, with then* smoking lamps, appear 
suddenly, like the dwellings of the watchers of the 
dead. Heavy stone walls, begTimed arcades, shadowy 
depths with lank forms of horses vaguely discernible 
in them, strange, bronzed, sallow visages circulating 
around the harness and clanking chains, their gleam- 
ing eyes lit up with fever — all this fantastic disorder 
and grimacing in the midst of the darkness and chilly 
dampness falling around it like a pall, imparts to the 
nerves and heart a long sentiment of horror. The 
ghastly vision is completed by a lugubrious postilion, 
who, in an old tattered cap, eternally jumps about in 
the yellow light. The rays from the lantern fall on his 
back with a spectral tint. He is constantly writhing 



" Di Jovis in tectis iram mirantur inanem 
Amboruin et tantos mortalibus esse labores." 



THE APENNINES. 3 

and twisting around in order to beat his nags, and you 
can see the fixed leer, the mechanical contraction of his 
meagre jaws. 

On awakening, at early dawn, a river appears me- 
andering beneath its morning exhalations ; then 
ravines and bald slopes confusedly intermingled and 
riven by innumerable fissures, with courses of whi- 
tened stones rolled down into the hollows and on the 
declivities and, in the distance, lofty, dark, striated 
mountains. The fi'ontier is passed, and the Apen- 
nines commence. A bright sun illumines the sharp 
crags of their summits ; the lungs breathe^ healthy 
atmosphere ; the land of pestilence is left behind. We 
have now come to a meagre soil, but one favorable to 
existence ; the country has a rigorous aspect, with 
grand and striking features, serving to stamp on the 
minds of its children noble and definite images without 
the body becoming sensuahzed by a too gross and 
abundant nourishment. Heaths, barren rocks, with 
here and there a strip of rich aromatic pasturage, some 
stony fields, and olives everywhere — you might imagine 
yourseK in Provence. Everything, even these pale 
olive-trees, adds to the austerity of the landscape. 
Most of these trees have burst asunder, their trunks 
having split and separated into fragments, the parts 
being held together only by a suture : one might regard 
them as the damned in Dante undergoing the penalty 
of the sword, cleft in twain, and hewn and hacked on 
every side from crown to heel and from heel to crown. 
Their tortuous roots cHng to the rocks like despairing 
feet ; and the bodies, tormented with their wounds, 
writhe and recoil in their agony : distorted or distended 
they still Hve, and no dechvity, or rock, or flood of 
winter, triumphs over their struggles and vitality. 
Toward Narni the aspect changes ; the road runs 
winding up the mountain, the face of which is com- 
pletely covered with evergreens : these have sprung up 



4 PEEUGIA AND ASSIST. 

everywhere, even in tlie hollows and on inaccessible 
heights ; only a few walls of perpendicular rock have 
opposed their invasion. The mountain thus rises, 
round from the torrent below to the sky above, like a 
magnificent summer bouquet intact in the midst of win- 
ter. After leaving Narni the landscape becomes still 
more beautiful. It is a fertile plain ; fresh grain, elms 
wedded to vines, an extensive smiling garden, and all 
around high hills of a graver hue ; beyond, a circle of 
blue mountains fringed with snow. Soave austero is a 
phrase frequently recurring to one in the landscapes 
of Italy : the mountains impart nobleness to them, 
without, however, being too lofty ; the imagination is 
not overwhelmed by them; they form amphitheatres 
and backgrounds to pictures, and are simply a natural 
architecture. Beneath them, varied cultures, numer- 
ous fruit-trees, and terraced fields, compose a rich and 
orderly decoration which soon renders one obKvious of 
our monotonous fields of grain, our still more monoto- 
nous vegetation, and every northern landscape which 
seems to be a manufactory of bread and m6at. 

We see, passing, numerous little carts mth young 
couples in them, a man and a girl ; the latter is gayly 
attired in bright colors, and has her head bare : she looks 
as if she was accompanying her lover. Many are the 
signs here of a voluptuous and picturesque content- 
ment. The young girls bind up their hair in the latest 
fashion, with puffs over the brow, and wear silk handker- 
chiefs, pendent ear-rings, and gilded combs. In Kome, 
some superb and charming heads projected out of the 
dirtiest of rookeries. A httle while ago, in passing 
through a small town, I observed, in a dull and gloomy 
street, leaning half-way out of an obscure window, a 
black velvet bodice, and above it, large dark eyes, 
flashing like lightning. Elsewhere, they raise their 
shawls over their heads, and stand ready draped for the 
painter. We cross before a cart in which eight peasants 



THE PEOPLE. 5 

are packed — all of them singing, eacli taking a part in 
a grave noble air, as in a choral. Indifferent objects — 
the form of a head, a garment, the physiognomies of 
five or six lads in a village auberge proffering gallan- 
tries to a pretty girl — all indicate a new world and a 
distinct race. In my judgment, the characteristic trait 
by which they are distinguished is the regarding of ideal 
beauty and sensuous happiness as one and the same 
thing. 

The road ascends and the carriage advances slowly, 
with a re-enforcement of horses over the precipitous parts 
of the mountain. A meagre stream alternately winds 
and tumbles, and loses itself beneath the bed of rocks 
rolled down by it during the winter. The white skel- 
eton of the mountain pierces through the brown mantle 
of its bare forests. I have never seen mountains more 
racked by upheavals ; the uphfted strata sometimes 
stand perpendicular like a wall. All this mineral 
framework is shattered and seems to be dislocated, so 
cracked and so full of crevices is each layer. Patches 
of snow, on the summit, marble the carpet of fallen 
leaves. The north mnd moans sad and cold. The con- 
trast is a strange one, when one regards the radiant sky 
where the sun shines in full force, and the delicious 
azure with its tints fading in the distance. On pass- 
ing the Apennines, low hills and rich plains appear 
well framed in and laid out, as on the hither slope. 
Here and there is a town stacked on a mountain ; a 
sort of round mole, and an ornament of the landscape, 
as we find them in the pictures of Poussin and Claude. 
This is the Apennines, with its bands of bastions ex- 
tending along a narrow peninsula, and imparting its 
character to the entire Italian landscape : no long 
rivers or grand plains, but narrow valleys, noble forms, 
plenty of rock and sunshine, with aliment and sensa- 
tions to correspond. How many individual and his- 
toric traits bear the imprint of this character ! 



CHAPTEE II. 

PERUGIA.— PEODUCTIONS, MANKEES, AND CUSTOMS OF THE EARLY 
RENAISSANCE.— MYSTIC ART.— ERA ANGELICO.— PERUGINO.— LE 
CAMBIO.— THE VALLEY OF PERUGIA. 

Perugia, April 3. — This is an old city of the middle 
ages, a city of defence and of refuge, situated on a 
craggy plateau, commanding a view of the entire val- 
ley. Portions of its walls are antique ; several of the 
gate foundations are Etruscan, the feudal epoch hav- 
ing added to them its towers and bastions. Most of 
its streets are sloping, and arched passages in them 
form sombre defiles. Oftentimes a house strides over 
the street, the first story prolonging itself into that 
which faces it ; vast walls of red brick, without win- 
dows, seem to be remnants of fortresses.— Innumerable 
fragments suggest to the imagination the feudal and 
republican city ; — the black entrance of San Agostino, a 
huge stone donjon, so scathed and corroded that it 
might be called a natural cavern ; and, on the summit, 
a terrace, supported by pretty little columns, which are 
Koman, and so many delicate forms, the first ideas of 
elegance and of art that flourished amid the dangers 
and enmities of the middle ages ; — the Palazzo del 
Governo, massive and severe, as was essential for 
street fights and seditions, but with a graceful portal, 
entwined with stone wreaths and cordons of sculptured 
figures, simple and sincere ; — Gothic forms and Latin 
reminiscences ; cloisters of superposed arcades, and 
lofty brick church-towers, blackened by time ; sculp- 
tures of the early renaissance, of the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries, the most original and animated of 
all ; a fountain by Arnolfo di Lapo, by Nicolas and 



EARLY SCULPTUEE. V 

by John of Pisa; a tomb of Benedict XI., again by 
John of Pisa (1304). Nothing is more charming than 
this first flight of an active invention, and of modern 
thought half-emerging from gothic tradition. The 
pope hes on a couch in a marble alcove, of which two 
cherubs withdraw the curtains : above, in an ogive ar- 
cade, stand the Yirgin and two saints, to welcome his 
soul. Language cannot express the surprised, tender, 
and childlike air of the Virgin : the sculptor had seen 
some young girl weeping at the bedside of a dying 
mother, and, wholly mastered by the impression, 
freely, without thought of the antique, unrestrained 
by any school, he expressed his sentiment. It is 
these spontaneous utterances which make a work of 
art a thing of eternity. They are heard athwart five 
centuries of time as distinctly as at the first day : 
man at length speaks across feudal and monastic 
tyranny, and we listen to the personal exclamation of 
an independent and complete spirit. The most trifling 
productions of this early age of sculpture arrest one's 
steps and fix one to the spot : it seems as if one caught 
the tones of an actual vibrating voice. After Michael 
Angelo, types are established ; no change is made 
but to arrange or purify a prescribed form. Before 
him, and even into the middle of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, each artist, like the citizen, is himself : genius 
and character are not subordinated by fashion and con- 
ventionalism ; every man stands erect before nature 
with a sentiment of his own, and figures emerge as 
diversified and as original in the arts as in life. 

The chanting of a mass in the cathedral prevent- 
ed me from seeing more than a bishop's tomb 
near the entrance. Beneath the recumbent bishop 
are four women holding two vases, a sword, and a 
book, admirable in their breadth and simplicity, 
with ample figures and magnificent luxuriant hair, 
but reahstic nevertheless, and only a nobler imprint 



o PEEUGIA AND ASSIST. 

of the model employed by veracious nature. To be 
one's self tlirougli one's self, alone and without reserve, 
to the very end, is there any other precept in art and 
in life? Through 'this precept and this instinct the 
modern man has made himself and unmade the mid- 
dle ages. Such are the reveries that occupy one's 
brain while wandering through these quaint, steep, 
and rugged streets, in these rude passages paved 
with brick and crossed with foot-props, amidst these 
strange structures where the eccentricity and it- 
regularity of the municipal and seigneurial life of 
ancient days bursts forth scarcely tempered by the 
few restorations of a modern police. Perugia, in the 
fourteenth century, was a democratic and belligerent 
republic, contending with and overcoming its neigh- 
bors. The nobles were excluded from office, and one 
hundred and fifty of them plotted the massacre of the 
magistrates : they were either hung or banished. One 
hundred and twenty castles stood on its territory, and 
there were eighty fortified villages. Gentlemen con- 
dottieri maintained their independence in these and 
waged war against the city. In Perugia there were 
gentlemen condottieri : the principal one, Biordo de 
Michelotti, assuming too great authority, was assas- 
sinated in his own house by the Abbe de St. Pierre. 
Besieged by Braccio de Montone, the Perugians 
sprung from the top of their walls, or let themselves 
down with ropes, in order to fight hand to hand with 
the defiant soldiers below. In the midst of such 
usages the souls of men are kept alive, and the soil is 
well prepared for the growth of the arts. 

Painting : Fra Angelico and Perugino. — But what a 
contrast between these arts and these usages ! In the 
Pinacotheca is a collection of the pictures of the 
school of which Perugia is the centre. It is mystic 
throughout ; it seems as if Assisi and its seraphic pi- 
ety governed all intellects. In this barbaric era she was 



FBA ANGELICO. 9 

the one centre of thought ; there were but few of tliem 
during the middle ages, and each extended its rule on 
all sides. Era Angelico da Fiesole, driven from Flor- 
ence, came and lived near here for seven years, and 
likewise worked here. He was better off here than in 
his own pagan Florence ; and it is to him that the eye is 
first attracted. It seems, on contemplating him, as if 
one were reading the "Imitation of Jesus Christ;" 
pure and gentle figures on golden backgrounds breathe 
a mute repose, like immaculate roses in the garden of 
Paradise. I remember an "Annunciation" by him, in 
two frames ( Nos. 221, 222 ). The Virgin is candor 
and gentleness itself : she has almost a German phys- 
iognomy — and how beautiful the two hands so piously 
clasped! The angel with curling tresses kneeling be- 
fore her seems like a httle smiling maiden, somewhat 
simple, who is about to leave the maternal home. 
Alongside of this, in the "Nativity," before the delicate 
infant Christ with dreamy eyes, two angels in long 
robes offer flowers ; they are so youthful, and yet how 
grave! These are the delicate touches which subse- 
quent painters are not to recover. A sentiment is an 
infinite and incommunicable thing ; no research and no 
labor can reproduce it in its integrity. In true piety 
there is a certain reservation, a chasteness, and conse- 
quently, arrangement of drapery and a choice of ac- 
cessories which the cleverest masters, a century later, 
will know no more. 

For example, in an "Annunciation " by Perugino, 
which is quite near this, the picture represents, not a 
small private oratory, but a grand court. The Virgin 
is standing, frightened, but not alone ; there are two 
angels behind her, and two others behind Gabriel. Is 
this chasteness to be reproduced later? Another pic- 
ture by Perugino exhibits St. Joseph and the Virgin 
kneeling before the infant : behind them, a slender por- 
tico profiles its light columns in the open air, and three 



10 PEKUaiA AND ASSISI. 

shepherds, at intervals, are praying. This great void 
enhances the religions emotions ; it seems as if one 
heard the silence of the country. 

In like manner • Perugino's features and attitudes 
express an unknown and unique sentiment. His figures 
are mystic children — or, if you please, adult souls kept 
infantile by the schooling of the cloister. None of 
them regard each other ; none of them act, each being 
absorbed in his own contemplation ; all look as if 
dreaming of God ; each remains fixed, and seems to 
withhold the breath for fear of disturbing the vision 
within. The angels especially, with their downcast 
eyes and bended brow, are true adorers, prostrate, 
steadfast, and motionless : those of the " Baptism of 
Jesus " have the humble and virginal modesty and 
innocence of a nun communing. Christ himself is a 
tender seminarist, who, for the first time, leaves the 
house of his good uncle the cure, never having raised 
his eyes to a woman, and receiving the host every 
morning in serving the mass. The only heads at the 
present day which give you any idea of this sentiment, 
are those of peasant girls reared, quite young, in a 
convent. Many of these at forty years of age have 
rosy cheeks without a wrinkle. From their placid 
look it seems as if they had never lived, w^hile on 
the other hand they have never suffered. In like 
manner, these figures stand motionless on the thresh- 
old of thought without crossing it — without, indeed, 
attempting to cross it. Man is not arrested, he arrests 
himself : the bud is not crushed, but it does not open. 
No similarity here is there to the mortifications and 
excesses of ancient Christianity, or of the catholic 
restoration; the end in view is not to stifle thought, 
or to subdue the flesh ; the body is beautiful and in 
perfect health. A youthful St. Sebastian, in green and 
gold bootees, an amiable young virgin almost Flemish 
and gross, besides twenty others of Perugino's fig- 



PERUGINO'S WOEKS. U 

ures, are not the subjects of an ascetic regimen. Their 
slender legs, however, and inert eye, denote that they 
are still the inhabitants of the sleeping forest. What 
a singular moment ! — The same with Perugino as with 
Van Eyck : the bodies belong to the renaissance, and 
their souls to the middle ages ! 

This is still more apparent in the Camhio, a kind of 
exchange or guildhall of the merchants. Perugino was 
intrusted with its decoration in the year 1500 ; and he 
has placed here a "Transfiguration," an "Adoration 
of the Shepherds," Sibyls, Prophets, Leonidas, Socrates, 
and other pagan heroes and philosophers, a St. John 
over the altar, and Mars and Jupiter on the archway. 
Alongside of this is a chapel wainscoted with sculp- 
tured wood and gilded and painted, the Eternal in 
the centre, and diverse arabesques of elegant nude 
women on the cruppers of. lions. Can the confluence 
of tAvo ages be better realized, the intermingling ideas, 
the bloom of a fresh paganism underneath a decrepit 
Christianity? — Merchants in long robes assembled 
on the wooden seats of this narrow hall ; before open- 
ing their deliberations, they proceed to kneel down in 
the little adjoining chapel to hear mass. — There Gian 
Nicola Manni has painted on the two sides of the 
high altar the animated and delicate figures of his 
"Annunciation," an ample Herodias, some charming 
erect young women, graceful and slender, which make 
one realize the spirit and richness of corporeal vitality. 
While joining in the droning hum of the responses, 
or following the sacred gestures of the officiating priest, 
more than one of the faithful has let his eyes wander 
up to the rosy torsos of the little chimeras crouched on 
the ceiling, executed, as is said in the town, by a young 
man of great promise, the favorite pupil of the master 
Raphael Sanzio d'Urbino. — The service is over ; they 
return to the council-chamber, and there, it may be 
presumed, a debate ensues on the payment of three 



13 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. 

hundred and fifty crowns in gold promised to Peru- 
gino for his work. This is not too much ; he has 
devoted seven years to it, and his fellow-citizens com- 
prehend sympathetically, through mental similarity, 
the two phases of his genius, the old and the new, 
the one christian and the other semi-pagan. 

First comes a *' Nativity," under a lofty portico, 
with a landscape of slender trees, such as he loved. It 
is an aerial meditative picture, calculated to make one 
appreciate a contemplative life. One cannot too highly 
commend the modest gravity, the mute nobleness of the 
Virgin kneeling before her infant. Three large serious 
angels on a cloud are singing from a sheet of music ; 
and this simplicity bears the mind backward to the 
times of mysteries. But one has only to turn his head 
to see figures of an entirely different character. The 
master has been to Florence, and antique statues, 
their nudities, the imposing action and spirited in- 
flexions of figures new to him, have revealed another 
world, which he reproduces with some restriction, but 
which entices him away from the road he first followed. 
Six prophets, five sibyls, five warriors and as many pa- 
gan philosophers stand erect, and each, hke an antique 
statue, is a masterpiece of force and physical noble- 
ness. It is not that he imitates a Grecian type or 
costume, for complicated casques, fantastic coiffures, 
and reminiscences of chivalry, are oddly intermingled 
with tunics and nudities ; but the sentiment is antique. 
They are powerful men satisfied with existence, and 
not pious souls dreaming of paradise. The sibyls are 
all blooming with beauty and youthfulness. The 
first one is advancing, and her bearing and form are 
of royal grandeur and stateliness. Just as noble and 
grand is the prophet-king who faces them. The se- 
riousness, the elevation of these figures is incom- 
parable. At this dawn of the imagination, the face, 
still intact, preserves, like that of Greek statuary, the 



PERUGINO'S WOEKS. 13 

simplicity and immobility of primitive expression. 
The changes of the physiognomy do not efface the 
type ; man is not broken up into petty, var^dng, and 
fleeting thoughts ; the character is made prominent 
by unity and repose. 

On a pilaster to the left is a bloated countenance, 
quite vulgar, with long hair under a red cap, which 
might be taken for an ill-humored abbe : the ex- 
pression is one of irritability, and even of craftiness. 
This is Perugino, painted by himself. He was at this 
time much changed. Those w^ho have seen his other 
portrait, also painted by himself some years before at 
Florence, have some difficulty in recognizing it. There 
is in his life as in his works two contrary sentiments, 
and two distinct epochs. No mind furnishes better 
evidence, through its contradictions and its harmonies, 
of the great transformation that was going on around 
him. He is, in the first place, religious : no one can 
doubt this when for so long a time, and even in the 
heart of pagan Florence, he is seen repeating and 
purifying figures so religious — painting gratuitously, to 
obtain by prayers the oratory of a confrerie situated 
opposite to his home ; painting and retaining in his 
house fourteen banners, in order to loan them to pro- 
cessions, and living and developing himself in the 
pious convents of Umbria.^ He is a creator in sa- 
cred art, and a man creates only after his own heart. 
It is not, again, pushing conjecture too far to represent 
him at Florence as an admirer of Savonarola. Savon- 
arola is Prior of the convent which he is decorating ; 
Savonarola causes pagan pictures to be burnt, and 
suddenly excites Florence up to the highest pitch of 
ascetic and christian enthusiasm. The first words of 
one of Savonarola's sermons are inscribed on a paper 
in the hand of the portrait which Perugino then made 

*Rio, Histoire de VArt Chretien^ vol. ii. p. 218. 



14 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. 

of himself; and lie purchases a plot of ground on 
whicli to erect a house for himself in the reformer's 
city. Suddenly the scene shifts : Savonarola is burnt 
ahve, and it seems to his disciples that Providence, 
justice, and divine power, are engulphed in his tomb. 
Several among them have retained to the end in their 
souvenirs, wholly corporeal and highly colored, the im- 
age of the martyr, betrayed, tortured, and reviled at 
the stake by those whose salvation he secured. Is it 
this great shock, joined to the epicurean teachings of 
Florence, which overthrew the faith of Perugino? 
At all events, on his return he is no longer the same 
man. His countenance, ironically distrustful, bears the 
marks of inward brooding and depression. His re- 
ligious works are less pure ; he dispatches them finally 
by the dozen like a manufacturer ; he is soon charged 
with caring no longer for any thing but money.^ He 
undertakes in the Cambio pagan subjects, and in their 
treatment assumes the style of the goldsmiths and 
anatomists of Florence. He paints, moreover, alle- 
gorical nudities,t Love and Chastity, meageiiy and 
coldly, like a laggard libertine who poorly compensates 
himself for the severities of his youth. He seems to 
have become a common atheist, embittered and hard- 
ened Hke all those who deny in hate and in mockery, 
through deception and chagrin. "He never could," 
says Yasari, " bring himself to believe in the immortal- 
ity of the soul. His iron brain could never be turned 
to good works ; he centred all his hopes in the goods 
of fortune." And a contemporary annotator adds : 
" Being at the point of death, he was told that it was 
necessary to confess himself.' He rephed : ' I want 
to see what a soul which has not confessed, will be 
in that place !' And he steadily refused to do other- 
wise." Such an end, after such a life, does it not 

* Vasari. f Gallery of the Louvre. 



RAPHAEL AND NATUEE. 15 

show liow the age of St. Francis becomes tlie age of 
Alexander YI. ? 

Others were more fortunate — as, for example, Ra- 
phael. It is here, in this atelier, before these landscapes, 
that he was formed ; and many times have I here dwelt 
on his pure, happy genius ; on his clear, open landscapes ; 
on the precision, somewhat dry, and the exquisite sim- 
plicity of his early works. This sky is of perfect serenity ; 
the light transparent atmosphere allows one to see the 
fine forms of the trees a league away. A hundred 
yards from San Pietro, an esplanade, planted with ever- 
greens, advances like a promontory ; below, spreads the 
campagna, a vast garden scattered with trees where the 
foliage of the olive imprints its pale rays on the verdure 
of the fresh-growing grain. The magnificent blue cu- 
pola glows sparkling with sunshine ; and the rays sport 
at will in this grand amphitheatre, through which they 
dart unimpeded by any obstacle. Toward the west 
rise gilded mountain-chains, one above the other, clear- 
er and clearer as they approach the remote horizon, 
the last one as exquisitely delicate as a silken veil. 
Meanwhile their ridges meet, mingling together lights 
and darks until, finahy descending and expanding, they 
diminish and are lost in the plain. Light, relief, and 
harmony — the eye marvels at and revels in so broad an 
expanse, so lovely in composition, of such perfect dis- 
tinctness of form. But the chilly atmosphere from the 
mountains will not let the body lose sight of itself in a 
too voluptuous contentment : one feels that the infertile 
rock and winter are near at hand. Yonder winds a 
long precipitous broken crag, sharp against the sky^ 
which pales to the hue of steel above fields of snow 
that seem to be slabs of marble. 



CHAPTEK III. 

ASSIST.— VILLAGES AND THE PEASANTRY.— THE THEEE CHUECHES 
—GIOTTO AND DANTE.— CONCORDANCE OF CHRISTIAN MYSTI- 
CISM WITH GOTHIC ART.— AN ENTHUSIASTIC IMAGINATION COM- 
PATIBLE WITH BARBAEISM. 

Assist, AjjtU Mli. — A stroll on foot of four hours to 
see the peasantry. 

A wxll-cultivated and charming country ; the green 
grain is coining up profusely, the grapevines are bud- 
ding, and every vine clings to an elm ; clear streams flow 
through the trenches. On the horizon is a belt of 
mountains, and the brilliant, immaculate snow blends 
with the satin of the clouds. 

Carts abound, with peasants in them singing. It is a 
great sign of prosperity, these Uttle vehicles ; they show 
that there is a class elevated above hard labor and the 
grosser necessities of life. Madonnas are numerous, 
and, for three ave, promise forty days of indulgence. 
This is Itahan religion. Otherwise, the villages resem- 
ble ours, and indicate about the same degree of cultiva- 
tion. It is Sunday; the people wear heavy shoes and 
passable clothes — no rags. They are very gay, and 
laugh and chat together in the open square ; some are 
pitching quoits ; others are playing ball ; and others 
morra. The inns and houses are not dirtier nor worse 
furnished than in France. Heavy beams support the 
ceiling ; there are chairs, tables, sideboards of polished 
wood, and a bottle-dresser provided with a couple of Ma- 
donnas. In the entrance-hall two large casks, encircled 
with heavy planks, stand permanently ; and I can tes- 
tify that the wine is not dear. Quarters of meat hang 
suspended on iron hooks. In a fertile country that 
consumes its own products, prosperity is natural. The 



THE TOMB OF ST. FRANCIS. I'J' 

inn begins to fill up, and the young lady of tlie house 
enters with her mother, gaudily dressed, with a black 
veil on her head and a sweet smile on her lips. She is 
gay, brilliant and coquettish ; and the young men be- 
gin to hover around her with that tender complacency 
and ravished voluptuous air which is peculiar to the 
Italians. 

On the summit of an abrupt height, over a double 
row of arcades, appears the monastery ; at its base a 
torrent ploughs the soil, winding off in the distance be- 
tween banks of boulders ; beyond is the old town pro- 
longing itself on the ridge of the mountain. We ascend 
slowty under the burning sun, and suddenly, at the end 
of a court surrounded by slender columns, enter with- 
in the obscurit}^ of the edifice. It is unequalled : before 
having seen it one has no idea of the art and the genius 
of the middle ages. Append to it Dante and the "Fio- 
retti" of St. Francis, and it becomes the masterpiece 
of mystic Christianity. 

There are three churches, one above the other, all of 
them arranged around the tomb of St. Francis. Over 
this venerated body, which the people regard as ever 
living and absorbed in prayer at the bottom of an inac- 
cessible cave, the edifice has arisen and gloriously 
flowered like an architectural shrine. The lowest is a 
crypt, dark as a sepulchre, into which the visitors de- 
scend with torches ; pilgrims keep close to the dripping 
walls and grope along in order to reach the grating. 
Here is the tomb, in a pale, dim light, similar to that of 
limbo. A few brass lamps, almost without light, burn 
here eternally like stars lost in mournful obscurity. 
The ascending smoke clings to the arches, and the 
hea^^ odor of the tapers mingles with that of the cave. 
The guide trims his torch ; and the sudden flash in this 
horrible darkness, above the bones of a corpse, is like 
one of Dante's visions. Here is the mystic grave of a 
saint who, in the midst of corruption and worms, be- 



18 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. 

holds Ills slimj dungeon of earth filled with the super- 
natural radiance of the Saviour. 

But that which cannot be represented by words is 
the middle church, a long, low spiracle supported by 
small, round arches curving in the half-shadow, and 
whose voluntary depression makes one instinctively 
bend his knees. A coating of sombre blue and of red- 
dish bands starred with gold, a marvellous embroidery 
of ornaments, wreaths, delicate scroll-work, leaves, and 
painted figures, covers the arches and ceilings with 
its harmonious multitude ; the eye is overwhelmed by 
it ; a population of forms and tints lives on its vaults ; 
I would not exchange this cavern for all the churches 
of Rome ! Neither antiquity nor the renaissance felt this 
power of the innumerable : classic art is effective through 
its simplicity, gothic art through its richness ; one 
takes for its type the trunk of a tree, the other the tree 
entire with all its luxuriance of foliage. There is a 
world here as in an animated forest, and each object 
is complex, complete like a living thing : on one hand 
is the choir-stalls, surcharged and sown with sculp- 
tures ; yonder a rich winding staircase, elaborate rail- 
ings, a light marble pulpit and funereal monuments, 
the marble of which, fretted and chased, seems the 
most elegant jewel-casket : here and there, haphazard, 
a lofty sheaf of slender columns, a cluster of stone 
gems Avhose arrangement seems a phantasy, and, in 
the labyrinth of colored foliage, a profusion of ascetic 
paintings with their halos of faded gold : all this vaguely 
discernible in a dim purple light, amidst dark reflec- 
tions from the wainscotings, v/hilst, at the entrance, the 
setting sun radiates myriads of golden darts like the 
peacock displaying its splendor. 

On the summit, the upper church shoots up as bril- 
liant, as aerial, as triumphant, as this is low and grave. 
Eeally, if one were to give way to conjecture, he might 
suppose that in these three sanctuaries the architect 



THE TOMB OP ST. FRANCIS. 19 

meant to represent the tliree worlds ; below, the gloom 
of death and the horrors of the infernal tomb ; in the 
middle, the impassioned anxiety of the beseeching 
christian who strives and hopes in this world of trial ; 
aloft, the bliss and dazzling glory of paradise. The 
latter, uplifted in the air and in the light, tapers its 
columns, narrows its ogives, refines its arches, mounts 
Upward and upward illuminated by the full day of its 
lofty windows, by the radiance of its rosaces, by the 
stained glass, and golden threads, and stars, which 
flash through the arches and vaults that confine the 
beatified beings and sacred passages with which it is 
painted from pavement to ceihng. Time, undoubtedly, 
has undermined them, several have fallen, and the 
azure that covers them is tarnished ; but the mind im- 
mediately revives what is lost to the eye, and it again 
beholds the angelic pomp such as it first burst forth 
six hundred years ago. Cathedrals do not have this 
splendor ; a detached chapel is necessary in order to 
prefigure to man the last of the stations of the chris- 
tian life. As in the Sainte ChajDelle of our Louis IX., 
man here found a tabernacle ; the gravity and the ter- 
rors of religion were effaced ; he could see nothing 
around him but celestial brightness and ecstatic rap- 
tures. Beneath this vault which, like an aerial dais, 
seems not to rest on the earth, amidst golden scintilla- 
tions and floods of light transfigured by the windows, 
in this marvellous embroidery of forms confusedly inter- 
mingling and intersecting each other as in a bridal robe, 
man felt as if he were translated alive into paradise. 
"We can neither reproduce nor depict these festivals. 
They have been depicted for us, and I silently re- 
peated these stanzes by Dante : 

And lo ! a sudden lustre ran across 

On every side athwart the spacious forest, 
Such that it made me doubt if it were lightning. 



20 PEEUGIA AND ASSIST. 

And a delicious melody there ran 
Along the luminous air . . . 



While mid such manifold first-fruits I walked 
Of the eternal pleasm-e all enrapt, 
And still solicitous of more delights, 

In front of us, like an enkindled fire 
Became the au' beneath the verdant boughs 
And the sweet sound as singing now was heard. 

A little farther on, seven trees of gold 

Far brighter than the moon in the serene 
Of midnight, at the middle of her month. 



Then saw I people, as behind their leaders, 
Coming behind them, garmented in white. 
And such a whiteness never was on earth.* 

Everything is in keeping ; Dante's friend Giotto has 
painted similar visions in the second church. His 
pupils and successors, all imbued with his style, have 
tapestried the other walls of the edifice with their 
works. There is no christian monument where pure 
mediaeval ideas reach the mind under so many forms, 
and which explain each other by so many contempo- 
rary masterpieces. Over the altar, enclosed within an 
elaborate iron and bronze railing, Giotto has covered 
an elliptic arch with grand, calm figures, and with 
mystic allegories. There is Saint Francis receiving 
Poverty as spouse from the hands of Christ ; Chastity 
vainly besieged in a crenelated fortress, and honored 
by angels ; Obedience under a canopy, surrounded by 
saints and kneeling angels ; Saint Francis, glorified, in 
the gilded mantle of a deacon, and enthroned in the 
midst of celestial virtues and chanting cherubim. 
This Giotto, who in the north seems to us simply un- 
skilful and barbarous, is already a perfect painter ; he 

* Purgatorio, canto XXIX, Longfellow's translation. 



GIOTTO. 21 

composes groups and appreciates airs of the head; 
whatever rigidity still remains with him does but 
augment the religious seriousness of his figures. Too 
powerful relief, too great human action would disturb 
our emotion ; too varied or too animated expressions 
are not necessary for angels and symbolic virtues ; 
all are spirits in ecstatic immobility. The vigorous and 
splendid virgins and muscular archangels, which are to 
follow two centuries later, reconduct us back to earth ; 
their flesh is so tangible that we do not believe in 
their divinity. Here the personages, the grand and 
noble women ranged in hieratic processions, resemble 
the Matildas and Lucias of Dante ; they are the sub- 
lime and floating apparitions of a dream. Their beau- 
tiful blonde tresses are gathered chastely and uni- 
formly around their brows ; pressing close to each 
other they meditate ; grand white or blue tunics in 
long folds depend around their forms ; they crowd 
around the saint, and around Christ in silence, like a 
flock of faithful birds, and their heads, somewhat mel- 
ancholy, possess the grave languor of celestial bliss. 

This is a unique moment. The thirteenth century is 
the term and the flower of living Christianity ; hence- 
forth there is only scholasticism, decadence, and fruit- 
less gropings after another age and another spirit. A 
sentiment which previously w^as only forming. Love, 
then burst forth with extraordinary power, and Saint 
Francis was its herald. He called water, flre, the 
moon and the sun brothers ; he preached to birds, and 
ransomed lambs on their way to market with his own 
mantle. It is stated that hares and pheasants sought 
refuge under the folds of his robe. His heart over- 
flowed toward all living creatures. His first disciples 
dwelt like himself in a sort of rapture, " so that often- 
times for twenty and even thirty days they lived 
alone on the tops of high mountains, contemplating all 
celestial objects." Their writings are effusions. " Let 



22 PERUaiA AND ASSISI. 

no one rebuke me if love forces me to go like a mad- 
man ! No heart can resist, none can escape from such 
love . . . For heaven and earth declare aloud and 
repeat to me, and all those whom it is my duty to love, 
address me : ' Cherish the love which hath made us in 
order to bring us near to Him' . . . O, Christ, often 
hast thou trodden this earth hke a man intoxicated! 
Love led thee, like a man that is sold. In all things 
thou showest only love, never art thou conscious of 
thyself .... The arrows poured down in such flights as 
to overwhelm me with agony. He launched them 
forth so powerfully that I despaired of warding them 
off, overcome not by a veritable death, but by excess 
of joy." It was not merely in the cloisters that such 
transports were encountered. Love became sovereign in 
laic as well as in religious life. In Florence associa- 
tions of a thousand persons clad in white traversed 
the streets with trumpets, led by a chief who was 
called the Lord of Love. The new language growing 
into life, fresh poesy and fresh thought, are devoted 
to describing and exalting love. I have just re-read 
the " Yita Nuova," and a few cantos of the " Paradiso ;" 
the sentiment is so intense that it fills one with fear : 
these men live in the burning realm where reason 
melts away. Dante's account of himself, like his poem, 
shows constant hallucination : he swoons, visions assail 
him, his body becomes ill, and the whole force of his 
thoughts is given to the recalling of or commenting 
on the agonizing or divine spectacles under which he 
has succumbed."^ He consults various friends about 
his ecstasies, and they reply to him in verses as myste- 
rious and as extreme as his own. It is clear that at 
this moment all the higher culture of the mind is cen- 
tred around morbid and sublime reveries. Tlie in- 

* Compare the "Aurelia"of Gerard cle Xerval, and the "Inter- 
mezzo" of Heine. 



MYSTIC SYMBOLRY. 23 

itiated use an apocalyptic language, purposely obscure; 
their words imply double and triple meanings. Dante 
himself lays it down as a rule that each subject con- 
tains four. In this state of extremes everything be- 
comes symboHc : a color like green or red, a number, 
an hour of the day or of the night, is of peculiar signifi- 
cance ; it is the blood of Christ, or the emerald fields 
of paradise, or the virginal azure of heaven, or the 
sacred cypher of divine personages which thus be- 
comes present to the mind. Through catalepsies and 
transports the brain labors, and an overcharged sensi- 
bility thrills with paroxysms which exalt it to supreme 
delight or precipitate it into infinite despair. Then 
do the natural boundaries between the diverse realms 
of thought become effaced and disappear. The adored 
mistress is transfigured into the hkeness of a celestial 
virtue. Scholastic abstractions are transformed into 
ideal apparitions. Souls congregate in etherial roses, 
" perpetual flowers of eternal joy which, like a per- 
fume, make perceptible all odors at once." Brute 
tangible matter, and the entire scaffolding of dry 
formulas melt and evaporate on the heights of mystic 
contemplation, until nothing remains but a melody, a 
perfume, a luminous ray, or an emblem ; this remnant 
of terrestrial imagery never having any value in itself, 
other than to prefigure the unfathomable and ineffable 
heyond. 

How did they support the anguish and constant ex- 
cesses of such a condition — the nightmare visions of 
Hell and Paradise, the tears, the tremors, the swoons, 
and other alternatives of such a tempest ?* What were 
the nerves that resisted all this ? What fecundity of 
soul and of .imagination fed it? All has since degen- 
erated ; man then was more vigorous, and remained 



* E caddi, come corpo niorto cade. Many similar instances almost 
equal to this one are to be found in the Divine Comedy. 



24 PEEUGIA AND ASSIST. 

young a longer time. I glanced lately over the life of 
Petrarch, written by himself. He loved Laura fourteen 
years. Now, the youth of the heart, the age of great 
discontents and great reveries, last five or six years ; 
after this one craves a comfortable house and a respect- 
able position. I imagine that a body tempered by war 
was more resistant, and that the rude, semi-barbarous 
regimen which destroyed the weak, allowed only the 
strong to subsist. But it is especially necessary to con- 
sider that melancholy, danger, monotony of life with- 
out diversion, without reading, and ever threatened, de- 
veloped a capacity for enthusiasm, sublimity, and in- 
tensity of sentiment. The security, comfort, and ele- 
gancies of our civilization divide us and belittle us ; a 
cascade is converted into a marsh. We enjoy and suf- 
fer through a thousand daily, petty sensations ; in 
those days, sensibihty, instead of evaporating, became 
choked up, and accumulated passion burst forth in 
eruptions. In a Russian romance, Tarass Boulba, a 
young Cossack chief, on leaving the camp with his 
senses blunted by the foulness of nomadic Hfe, the 
odors of brandy and of the stable, and through daily 
contact with ferocious and brutal beings, perceives a 
beautiful and delicate maiden in handsome attire ; he 
is intoxicated, kneels down, forgets father and country, 
and thenceforth contends against his own kindred. A 
similar crisis prostrated Dante before a child of nine 
years. 

Let us dwell a moment on the surrounding con- 
dition of things. It was an epoch of pitiless wars and- 
of mortal enmities. People in Florence proscribed 
each other, and fought from house to house, and from 
quarter to quarter. Dante himself was condemned to 
the stake. The torments invented by the Eomanos 
were still rife in men's imaginations, and a regime 
worse than our Reign of Terror had taken root be- 
tween family and family, caste and caste, and city and 



EELIGIOUS FERYOR. 25 

cit}^ Out of this bristling precinct tlie mind issued 
free for the first time after so many centuries, and it 
entered on an unexplored field. It did not follow its 
natural bent, as formerly at a similar crisis in the 
small republics of Greece ; a powerful religion seized 
upon it at its birth and diverted it off. The supreme 
good tendered to it was not an equilibrium of moderate 
sensations and the healthiness of active faculties, but 
transports of infinite adoration and the raptures of an 
over-excited imagination. Happiness no longer con- 
sisted in a consciousness of strength, wisdom and 
beauty ; in being the honored citizen of a glorious 
city ; in dancing and singing noble hymns ; in talking 
with a friend under a tree on a serene day. These 
pleasures were declared inadequate, low and crim- 
inal ; appeals were made to feminine sentiments, to 
nervous sensibility, and man had held out to him 
ecstatic contemplation, indefinable raptures and de- 
lights to which the senses, language and the imagina- 
tion never attain. The sterner life w^as, the more ex- 
alted were these assurances. The vastness of the con- 
trast multiplied the charms of the promised bliss, and 
the heart wdth all its youthful energy rushed through 
the issue opened to it. Then was seen that strange 
incongruity of a laic life similar to that of the Greek 
republics, and a religious life similar to that of the 
Soiifis of Persia — on the one hand, free citizens, prac- 
tical men, combatants and artists, and on the other, 
cloistered ascetics, preachers wandering about half- 
naked, and penitents offering themselves to the lash ; — 
furthermore, the two extremes met in one person, the 
same spirit harboring the most virile energy and the 
most feminine gentleness ; the same man magistrate 
and mystic ; a practical politician filled wdth hatred, 
corresponding in enigmas on the languors and halluci- 
nations of love ; the chief of a party and the father 
of a family absorbed with the worship of a dead child, 

2 



3b PERUGIA AND ASSISI. 

and diffusing over actual landscapes and contemporary 
figures, over positive interests, local resentments, and 
the technical science of his country and century, the 
monstrous or divine illuminations of ecstasy and of 
horror. 

' A monk conducted me into the refectorj^, and then 
through a series of halls to a square interior court 
where a two-story portico, supported by dehcate Httle 
columns, forms an elegant promenade. Pavement, col- 
umns, walls and cisterns, all are of stone ; above, like 
a frame, runs a roof of reddish tile. The blue sky, like 
a round dome, overspreads the white square ; no one 
can imagine the effect of such simple forms and colors. 
All around the convent winds a second promenade un- 
der ogive arcades of rough stones turned brown by 
the sun ; from this the eye embraces the beautiful val- 
ley and its diadem of snow-clad mountains. The poor 
monks of the " Fioretti," through impoverishing their 
life, ennobled it ; tv/o or three sentiments absorbed it 
entirely, but these were sublime. "Whoever abandoned 
the brutal herd was compelled to become a great poet ; 
when he had not become a kneeling machine, he ended 
in appreciating the serenity and grandeur of scenes 
like this. " Brother Bernardo lived in contempla- 
tion on the heights like a SAvallow : for this reason 
Brother Egidio declared that he was the sole one to 
whom was awarded the gift of nourishing himself in 

flying like the swallow And Brother Cur- 

rado having performed his orisons here, there appeared 
to him the Queen of Heaven with her blessed infant 
in her arms, in great splendor of light, and, approach- 
ing Brother Currado, she placed in his arms the 
blessed infant, which Currado having received and very 
devoutly kissed, and embracing it and pressing it to his 
bosom, melted away and wholly dissolved in divine 
love with most inexpressible consolation." 

On the plain below is a large church containing the 



OVERBECK. 2? 

saint's lionse ; but it is modern, with a pompous pagan 
cupola. Overbeck's frescoes are imitations. In striv- 
ing to be gothic he shows himself awkward, giving 
twisted necks to his angels, and to the figure of God 
the pitiful expression of a man whose dinner disagrees 
with him. You hasten away from them ; after genuine 
devotion nothing is more disagreeable than its coun- 
terfeit. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

POLITICAL C0]NT3ITI0N.— DIFFICULTIES AND RESOURCES.— DISPOSI- 
TION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS.— PREDOMINANCE AND PROGRESS 
OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL AND LIBERAL PARTY.— SY:MPATHY BE- 
TWEEN ITALY ANT) FRANCE.— INCONVENIENCES AND ADVANTA- 
GES OF MODERN CENTRALIZATION, 

Ajwil 8. — Numerous conversations every day with 
people of every class and opinion ; but the liberals 
predominate. 

The diplomats, they say, are ill-disposed toward the 
unity of Italy; they do not regard it as substantial. 
According to the two clever men with whom I have 
travelled, one an officer and the other an attache to an 
embassy, the capital trait of the Italians is weakness 
of character and richness of intellect, quite the oppo- 
site of the Spaniards, who with a strong will have nar- 
row and obdurate brains. They dispute about the 
number of volunteers under Garibaldi in 1859 ; some 
carry it up to twenty-five hundred, and others to seven 
thousand, — ^in any event a ridiculously small number. 
The Emperor Napoleon led the foreign legion with al- 
most empty regiments ; nobody came forward to fill 
them up. It seems very hard to the Italian to quit his 
mistress or wife, to enlist and to undergo discipline ; 
the military spirit died out a long time ago in the 
country. According to my friend the officer, who 
served in the late campaign, Milan furnished in all but 
eighty volunteers, and the peasantry rather sided with 
the Austrians. As to either the middle class or the 
nobles, they were very enthusiastic and made speeches, 
but their enthusiasm evaporated in words, none of it 
extending to risking their fives. Generosity, true feel- 



POLITICS. 29 

ing, and ardent patriotism were only to be found among 
the women. After the peace of Villafranca some 
Frenchmen, lodging near Pescliiera, said to their hosts, 
"Ah, yon remain Austrians — what a pity!" The 
daughter of the family did not at first comprehend them, 
but when she understood their meaning she raised both 
hands, and, with flaming eyes, asked her brothers if they 
had no guns and if they called themselves men ; " Never," 
said the officer, " have I seen an expression so ardent 
and so sublime !" Her brothers shook their heads and 
replied with the discreet patience of the Italian, 
"What is thereto do?" 

This lack of energy contributed a good deal toward 
precipitating peace. The Emperor Napoleon stated 
to M. Cavour, " You promised me two hundred thou- 
sand men, sixty thousand Piedmontese and one hun- 
dred and forty thousand Italians. You give me thirty 
thousand ; I shall be compelled to call for one hundred 
thousand more of the French." If the protected do 
not aid themselves the protector becomes uneasy and 
discouraged, and the war suddenly droops. Accus- 
tomed to yielding, the Italian has lost the faculty of 
resisting ; if you get angry he is astonished, becomes 
alarmed, yields and regards you as crazy, (malto). 
Such is the process by which the fiery M. de Merode 
obtained an ascendancy over the Sacred College. 
Now, when a people knows not how to fight, its mde- 
pendence is only provisional ; its life depends on grace 
or on accident. 

This is why, they say. Piedmont did wrong to yield 
to opinion in the taking of Naples. It has made itself 
so much the weaker ; its army is the worse for recruit- 
ing its regiments with poor soldiers. If, to-day, it is 
master there, it is the same as wdth Championnet, 
Ferdinand, Murat and their predecessors : with ten 
thousand soldiers one can always be master of Naples ; 
but let any sudden crisis occur, and the government 



30 PEEUGIA AXD ASSIST. 

falls to tlie ground, tins one nmning the same risk as 
those that have gone before it. It has just committed 
a serious blunder in abandoning the convents to muni- 
cipal rancor ; a lot of miserable monks and nuns are 
turned out of doors, which only excites scandal, and 
proTokes resentment, as in la Yendee. Now religion 
here is not abstract or rational as in France ; it is 
based on the imagination and is so much the more 
sensitive and vivacious ; some dsLj or other it will inevi- 
tably turn against liberalism and Piedmont. Besides, 
the unity of the country is against nature ; Italy, 
through its geography, its races and its past, is divided 
into three sections ; the most it can do is to form a 
federation. If it is kept together to-day, it is through 
an artificial power, and because France, on the Alps, 
stands sentinel against Austria. Should a war occur 
on the Ehine the Emperor will not amuse himseK split- 
ting up his forces, and then Italy wiU break up into its 
natural divisions. 

I reply to this that the revolution here is not an 
affair of race, but one of interests and ideas. It 
began at the end of the last century, with Beccaria for 
instance, in the propagation of French literature and 
philosophy. The middle class, the enhghtened are 
those who diffuse it by leading the people along with 
them in their wake, as formerly in the United States 
during the war of independence. It is a new force, 
superior to provincial antipathies ; unknown a hundred 
years ago ; inherent, not in the nerves, in the blood 
and in the habits, but in the brain, in study and in 
discussion ; of vast grandeur, since it brought about 
the American and French revolutions, and growing in 
grandeur since ceaseless discoveries of the human 
mind and multiplied ameliorations of the human 
condition daily contribute to augment it. Will it 
suffice to sustain Italy ? That is a problem of moral 
mechanics, and is not to be solved, for lack of the 



PATRIOTISM. 31 

means b}' wliicli to estimate the power of the lever in 
relation to the resistance of the mass. Meanwhile, let 
us examine a few simple facts ready at hand : it is the 
only way to arrive at any approximate value of forces 
which we can see but which we cannot measure. 

Conscripts are passing along the road in gray vests, 
soldiers in uniform, and frequently handsome officers 
in blue with a gay and spruce air. Every small town 
has a national guard : — you will see these guards sit- 
ting on stone benches in the sunshine at the entrance 
of town-halls ; — the streets bear the names of Victor 
Emmanuel, Garibaldi and Solferino. People are in- 
toxicated with their recent independence, and talk of 
themselves vain - gloriously . A Roman who is going 
to Switzerland, remarks that " we have four hundred 
thousand soldiers and six hundred thousand national 
guards ; in two years Italy will become united, and we 
shall then be able to whip the Austrians." — The ex- 
aggerations of patriotism and of hope are spurs of 
great utility. 

On the frontier the chief of customs, a Piedmon- 
tese and formerly a soldier in the Crimea, stormed 
and railed in the middle of the night in his wooden 
shanty against Antonelli and Merode, " those brigands 
and assassins." He descanted on the rights of nations 
and the duties of citizens. " The atmosphere here is 
unhealthy four months of the year, the country is 
gloomy, living is dear and life solitary,— but I serve 
Italy, I have already served her in the ranks, and I 
tmst that next year there will be no frontier." — You 
will note that the comrades of Hoche, a sergeant in 
1789 in the French guards, uttered substantially the 
same words and in the same tone. 

At Foligno, in a small cafe, I offer haioccJii in pay- 
ment ; the proprietor refuses them ; " No, Signor, that 
money has no value here — we want nothing Roman. 
Let the Pope and the priests clear out and go to 



33 PEEUGIA AND ASSISI. 

Heaven ! It's the best thing they can do for us ! He 
is ill now — the sooner it is over the better !" And all 
this coarsely, amidst the jeers of his wife and of five 
or six laborers there. — This is a veritable Jacobin 
household as with us in 1790. 

Yesterday in a public vehicle I had three hours' 
conversation with my two companions, one a brass- 
lamp maker of Perugia and the other a peasant and 
tile-maker. The former is a well-to-do mechanic ; he 
went to Turin as one of a deputation to Victor Em- 
manuel, and is a passionate partisan of Italy. His 
son who had completed his studies and become a 
painter, enlisted and is serving as a sergeant against 
the Calabrian brigands. The tile - maker had ten 
nephews in the army. They were not disposed to be 
"reserved and gave me innumerable details. 

According to these men every thing is going on 
well. Out of twenty persons, fifteen are for the gov- 
ernment, four for the pope and one repubhcan. The 
republicans have entirely lost ground; they are re- 
garded as fanatics (fantastici). The peasantry are 
daily coming round to the government ; they are al- 
ready hunting out refractory conscripts (renitenti) and 
bringing them back. The conscription was a sore trial 
to them, but they are getting used to it. In the army 
the young men eat good food, return home strong and 
active, and with a martial spirit ; the effect is wonder- 
ful on the young girls, and consequently on the young 
men, and yet again on their parents and neighbors. 
Taxes are unquestionably more onerous ; but every- 
body works and doubly profits by it. People are 
building and repairing. Spoleto is completely reno- 
vated ; gas has been introduced at Perugia ; the rail- 
road to Ancona progresses and there is great excite- 
ment everywhere. " The farthings circulate !" ( Tutti 
i quattrini lavorano.) 

The entire middle class is enthusiastic in this sense 



PATRIOTISM. 33 

In a population of 82,000 at PeiTigia tliere are 1400 
members of tlie national guard, including merchants, 
shop-keepers and prominent, well-established people. 
The J do patrol duty with the soldiers, drill, subject 
themselves to inconveniences, and contentedly. " I 
have made sacrifices for my country," said my banker, 
"and am willing to make still greater ones." There 
are no more municipal or provincial rivalries ; Flor- 
ence has sent back to Pisa in token of fraternity the 
chains of its harbor vv^hich she had formerly captured. 
I point to an officer passing and ask if he is not a 
Piedmontese. "No more Piedmontese — we are all 
mixed up in the army — nobody now but ItaKans!" 

They have all the confidence and illusions of 1789. 
On remarking that the Italian army had not yet de- 
monstrated its capacity : — " We fought at Milan in 
1848, and in three days, drove off alone the Austrians. 
We fought also at Perugia, against the Swiss, who 
massacred the women and children ; — I was then in 
the cavalry. There was a fortress against the town, — 
look, that is all there is left of it ; — we are converting 
it into a museum. No, no, we have no fear of the Aus- 
trians. We had seventy thousand volunteers against 
them in 1859. In two years more the peasantry will 
rise to a man and we will drive them out of Yenice." 
(Seven thousand volunteers have become seventy. 
But the people are poetic ; the more they magnify, 
the more they exalt themselves.) 

There is the same anti-ecclesiastic rigidity as in 
our revolution. According to my two companions " the 
priests are scamps (birhantij ; the government does 
right in confiscating the property of the monks ; it 
ought to drive away every rascal who openly agitates 
against it. Before 1859 they were all-powerful and 
meddled in domestic matters ; they were tried by a 
special tribunal and never punished. Now they lower 
their heads ; two of them have lately been condemned 



34 PEKUGIA AND ASSISI. 

for crimes and everybody rejoices. They did nothing 
but harm. The beggars, children, and adults, who 
beset us at Assisi are of their providing, physically 
as well as morally. They corrupted women, encour- 
aged idleness through their mendicity, and main- 
tained a state of ignorance ; but now instruction is 
everywhere diffused, each commune having its own 
school ; — there are thirteen in Assisi, which has but 
three thousand inhabitants." A beggar attached him- 
self to our vehicle. " Be off, you knave ! go to the 
monks — among them you will find your father !" The 
beggar with his obsequious, sly Italian smile replied, 
" No, signor, I do not belong to this part of the coun- 
try, give me a little something." 

Many trifling circumstances bear witness to this 
resentment against the clergy. Lately, at Foligno, in 
a masquerade, the pope and the cardinals were trav- 
estied in the streets with shouts, laughter and uni- 
versal excitement. — In Perugia, alongside of San Do- 
menico, stands a blackfriar's convent converted into 
a military barracks. The soldiers, on entering it, 
pierced the frescos of the inner wall with their bay- 
onets. The lacerated figures are now falling off in 
fragments ; one can scarcely distinguish, here and 
there, the forms of some of the personages. The 
smoke of a soldier's kitchen suffices to destroy the 
finest group. — A quarter of an hour after this, at San 
Pietro, a priest informed us with a sad look, that on 
entering that place they had also torn away paintings 
in another chapel. He uttered this with a melanchol}^, 
humiliated aspect ; the ecclesiastics here do not speak 
in the same tone as at Rome. — These outrages are 
similar to those of our revolution : the layman and 
military barracks are substitutes without transition 
for the ecclesiastic and the monastery. This antag- 
onism provokes thought ; there is little probability of 
its ending ; it has never ended in France ; the revoiu- 



MODEKN EEFOKMS. 35 

tion and Catholicism still remain under arms and in 
battle array. Protestant peoples, the English for ex- 
ample, are more fortunate. Luther has there recon- 
ciled the Church and society. Marrying the priest, 
making of him by education and habit a sort of more 
serious layman, elevating the layman to reflection and 
criticism by giving him the Bible and an exegesis, 
suppressing the ascetic portion of religion and infus- 
ing into society the conscience as moral guide, is the 
greatest of modern revolutions. The two spirits har- 
monize in Protestant countries ; they remain hostile in 
Catholic countries and, unfortunately, to their hostility 
one sees no limit. Another merchant, an officer, and 
my purveyor with whom I chat entertains me with 
similar views. What an animated and complete under- 
standing these Italians have ! Here is a domestic who 
tells me all about himself, his marriage and his views 
of life, who reasons and judges like a cultivated man. — 
A miserable guide, half beggar, in a shop at Assisi ex- 
pressed well-connected opinions and explained to me, 
skeptically, the state of the country. " The peasantry 
hunt after the conscripts, " he said" because they are 
jealous ; their sons have been taken and they wish to 
have the sons of others caught. The rich always eat 
up the poor while the poor never eat up the rich." 
There is a great readiness of conception and prompt- 
ness of expression ; such a people is always prepared 
for political discussion ; you notice it in the cafes ; the 
ardor and copiousness of discussion are surprising, 
and likewise its good sense. In the upheaval of a gen- 
eral revolution and of a vacillating government every 
town is self-administered and self-supporting. 

They agree generally in this, that the liberal party is 
progressing. According to my friend the young officer 
the number of the refractory diminishes every year ; this 
year some borough near Orvieto, where he is in garri- 
son, no longer possesses one. At Foligno, where he 



S6 PEEUGIA AND ASSISI. 

has lived, only two or three old papal families are named ; 
they are avaricious and behind the age, one being re- 
lated to a cardinal ; the rest of the town is for Victor 
Emmanuel. Ecclesiastical property is rented at low 
rates to the peasantry, which reconciles them to the 
government ; the result will be a sale of it to them and 
then they will become openly patriotic. In short the 
enemy of the new order of things is the clergy, 
monks who are reduced to fifteen cents a day and 
priests who advise young men to avoid the conscrip- 
tion, and to pass over the Koman frontier. — Finally, like 
almost all the Italians I have seen, he is Catholic and a 
believer; he blames the " Diritto'' a violent jacobin 
journal, and thinks that religion may accommodate itself 
to the civil government. What he disapproves of is 
the temporal authority of the clergy; let the priests 
confine themselves to their functions as priests, admin- 
ister the sacraments and set an example of good be- 
havior ; once under proper restraint they will become 
better. At Orvieto, where he lives, many of the children 
in the town are attributed to the monks, which is an 
evil. He admires our clergy, so correct, and never pro- 
voking scandal ; he approves of the prescribed cos- 
tume of our priests, — in Italy they are only required 
to dress in black. He ridicules those Roman monsig- 
nore, set to watch over morals and superintend the 
theatres, who enter the box of the leading danseuse in 
order to forbid her to indulge in caprices. Accord- 
ing to him such an order of things excites people against 
religion itself. At Sienna, in the shop-windows, we 
have just seen a translation of " le Maudit," and the 
" Yie de Jesus," the last work of Strauss, and an engrav- 
ing representing Truth overwhelming obstinate and 
hypocritical priests. 

My impression of the country between Perugia and 
Sienna is that it is similar to France. The villagers are 
about as well clad as our own ; they have more horses, 



RESEMBLANCE TO FRANCE. 37 

and many among them are landowners. The aspect of 
the villages and of the small towns reminds one of our 
South. The country is of the same structure — small 
valleys and moderate elevations — the soil seeming to 
be as well cultivated. The garrison anecdotes which 
my friend the officer relates to me and the interiors of 
the inns and of the middle-class tenements with which 
I glance recall trait for trait a journey I made last 
year in the middle and south of France. To complete 
the resemblance soldiers are everywhere seen on the 
road, on furlough, or proceeding to join their regi- 
ments ; the people are as gay and their conversation 
as animated as with us. The boroughs and small 
towns wear that provincial aspect, somewhat dull and 
tolerably clean, which we are so familiar with. It 
might be called a backward France, a younger sister 
that is growing and " catching up " with the elder. If 
we consider the contending parties, on the one side 
the nobles and clergy, and on the other the middle and 
commercial class, people of education and the liberal 
professions, and between the two the peasantry which 
the revolution is trying to emancipate from traditional 
influences, the resemblance becomes striking. To 
complete it, it is evident by their conversation, that 
their model is France ; they repeat our ancient ideas 
and confine themselves to reading our books. Slight- 
ly cultivated people know French and scarcely ever 
English or German : our language is the only one like 
theirs, and besides, they, like ourselves, require gayety, 
wit, the agreeable and even license ; one finds in 
their hands not only our good authors but our second- 
class romances, our minor newspapers and low-class 
literature. Their great reforms all take place in the 
same sense ; they have imitated our coinage and our 
measures ; they are organizing a salaried church with- 
out private property, primary schools, a national guard 
and the rest. 



o» PERUGIA AND ASSISI. 

I am aware of tlie drawbacks to our system, — the 
suppression of all superior ranks ; the reduction of all 
ambitions and of all mind to the commonplace ideas 
and enterprises of 'life ; the abolition of the proud and 
lofty sentiments of one brought up in command, the 
protector and natural representative of those around 
him ; the uniyersal multiplication of the envious, nar- 
row-minded, insipid hourgeois as described by Henri 
Monnier ; all the wear and tear, vileness and impoverish- 
ment of head and heart from which aristocratic coun- 
tries are exempt. Nevertheless, such as it is, their 
form of civiKzation is passable and preferable to many 
others, and natural enough to Latin populations ; and 
France, which is now the first of Latin nations, takes 
the lead with its revolution and its civil code among 
its neighbors. 

This social structure consists in this : a great central 
government with a powerful army, heavy imposts and a 
vast corps of functionaries restrained by honor and 
who do not peculate ; — a small portion of land to each 
peasant, besides schools and other facilities to enable 
him to mount upward to a higher class if he has capa- 
city ; — a hierarchy of public offices open to the ambi- 
tion of the middle class, all unfairness being limited 
through the organization of examinations and competi- 
tions, all aspiration being kept within bounds and satis- 
fied by promotion which is slow but sure ; — in short 
the almost equal partition of all desirable things so 
that every one may have a share — nobody a very large 
one — and almost all one of small or mediocre propor- 
tions; and, above all, internal security, a fair sum of 
justice and of fame, and national glory. All this goes 
to make up a partially instructed, very well protected, 
tolerably regulated and very inert hourgeois, whose sole 
thought is to pass from an income of two thousand 
francs a year to one of six thousand. In a word a mul- 
titude of the half-cultivated and the half-rich, twenty 



THE MODEL BOURGEOIS. 39 

or tliirty millions of individuals passably contented, 
carefully penned, drilled and restrained, and who, when 
necessity calls, can be launched forth in a single body. 
Taking things in gross it is about what men have thus 
far found to be best ; nevertheless we must wait a 
century to see England, Austria and America. 



CHAPTEE V. 

FEOM PEEUGIA TO SEENNA.— ASPECT OF SIENNA.— TKANSITION FEOM 
A REPUBLICAN TO A MONARCHICAL SYSTEM.— MEDLEVAL MONXJ- 
l^IENTS.- THE CATHEDRAL.— ITALIAN -GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.— 
NICHOLAS OF PISA.— EARLY SCULPTURE.— APPRECIATION OF FORM 
IN THE RENAISSANCE. 

Sienna, April 8. — The country becomes flat between 
Chiasi and Sienna ; we enter Tuscany ; marshes in 
the distance spread out their dingy and sickly verdure. 
A little farther on there are low hills and then gray 
slopes covered with the black twisted sprouts of the 
vine ; it is a meagre and flat French landscape. An 
old city surrounded with brown walls appears at the 
left, on a hill, and we then enter Sienna. 

It is an old repubhc of the middle ages, and often on 
the maps of the sixteenth century, I had contemplated 
its abrupt silhouette, bristling with bastions, crowded 
with fortresses and filled with evidences of public and 
private contention. Public wars against Pisa Florence 
and Perugia, private wars among the bourgeoisie the 
nobles and the people, street combats, massacres in the 
town-hall, violations of the constitution, exile of all no- 
bles capable of using arms, exile of four thousand arti- 
sans, proscriptions, confiscations, wholesale executions, 
plots of the exiled against the city, popular insurrec- 
tions, despair carried even to the surrender of liberties 
and submission to a foreign yoke, sudden and furious 
rebellions, clubs similar to those of the Jacobins, asso- 
ciations like those of the carbonari, a desperate siege 
like that of Warsaw, and systematic depopulation like 
that of Poland, — nowhere has life been so tragic. 
From two hundred thousand inhabitants the popula- 
tion of the city fell to six thousand. The enmities re- 



SIENNA. 41 

quired to exhaust a people of sucli vivacity cannot be 
told. Of all human creatures the feudal Italian was 
the most richly endowed with an active will and con- 
centrated passions, and he bled himself, and was bled, 
to the last drop in his veins before sinking down into 
the bed of monarchical tranquillity. Cosmo II., in or- 
der to remain master, destroyed by starvation, war and 
executions fifty thousand peasants. At this epoch we 
see in engravings, defiling on the republican piazza, 
pompous cavalcades, mythological chariots, reviews 
and the livery of the new prince. The artist indulges 
in interminable adulation on the margin of his picture. 
Servile manners, somnolency, worn out gallantry and 
universal inertia become established. Sienna is re- 
duced to a provincial town, visited by tourists. I am 
told by an ecclesiastical acquaintance that when he 
came here in 1821 the lifelessness and ignorance of the 
place were complete. Two days in a vettura were 
necessary in order to go from Sienna to Florence. A 
noble before setting out on his journe}^ confessed him- 
seK and made his will. There was not a library, not a 
book. One day my clerical friend, who is Hberal and in- 
telligent, subscribes to two French newspapers. Some 
one pays him a visit ; " What, have you a French news- 
paper!" The visitor takes hold of it and feels the 
miraculous godsend. Twenty minutes after this the 
ecclesiastic goes out for a walk. The first person he en- 
counters exclaims, " Is it true that you have a French 
newspaper?" and then another who utters the same 
thing, the report having S23read instantaneously like a 
ray of light in a chamber closed for a century. 

A town thus preserved is like a Pompeii of the middle 
ages. You ascend and descend steep narrow streets 
paved with stone and bordered with monumental 
houses. A few still retain their towers. In the vicinity 
of the Piazza they succeed each other in rows, forming 
lines of enormous bosses, low porches and curious 



42 PEEUGIA AND ASSISI. 

masses of brick pierced with occasional windows. 
Several of the palaces seem like bastions. The Piazza 
is surrounded with them ; no sight more aptly suggests 
to the imagination the municipal and violent customs of 
ancient times. This square is irregular in shape and 
in surface, and is peculiar and striking like all natural 
objects that have not been deformed or reformed by ad- 
ministrative discipline. Facing it, is the Palazzo Pub- 
lico, a massive town-hall adapted to resist sudden at- 
tacks and for the issue of proclamations to the crowd 
assembled in the open square. Frequently have these 
been cast from these ogive windows and likewise the 
bodies of the men killed in the seditions. The cornice 
bristles with battlements ; defence in these days is 
often encountered under ornament. To the left of this 
the symmetrical form of a gigantic tower with its 
double expansion of battlements rises to a prodigious 
height ; it is the tower of the city which plants on its 
summit its saint and its standard and speaks afar to 
distant cities. At its base the Gaja fountain which in 
the fourteenth century, amid universal acclamation, 
brought water for the first time to the pubhc square, 
stands framed in by one of the most elegant of marble 
baldachins. 

It was growing late and I entered the cathedral for 
a moment. The impression is incomparable ; that of 
St. Peter's at Kome does not approach it : a surprising 
richness and sincerity of invention, the most admirable 
of gothic flowers — but of a new gothic that has 
bloomed in a better clime, in the midst of genius of a 
higher culture ; more serene, more beautiful, more re- 
ligious and yet healthy, and which is to our cathedrals 
what the poems of Dante and Petrarch are to the songs 
of our trouveres ; a pavement and pillars with stones of 
alternate courses of white and black marble, a legion 
of animated statues, a natural combination of gothic 
and roman forms, corinthian capitals bearing a laby- 



SIENNA CATHEDEAL. 43 

rintli of gilded arcades and arches panelled with azure 
and stars. The declining sun streams in at the door 
and the enormous vault with its forest of columns spar- 
kles in the shadow above the crowd kneeling in the naves 
and chapel, and around the columns. The multitude 
in the profound darkness swarms indistinctly up to the 
foot of the altar, which, all at once, with its bronzes 
and candelabra and the damask copes of its priests and 
the prodigal magnificence of its jewels and tapers, rises 
upward hke a bouquet of light of magical splendor. 

Aj^ril 8. — I passed half of the day in this church ; 
one might easily pass a whole day there. For the first 
time elsewhere than in engravings I find an Italian- 
Gothic, the earliest of two renaissance periods, less 
pure than the other but more spontaneous. 

A grand portal decked with statues projects above its 
three entrances three pointed pediments, over these 
pediments three pointed gables, around these gables 
four pointed spires and all of them crenelated with 
openings ; but the arch of the doors is Boman : the 
facade, in spite of its elongated angles, has latin rem- 
iniscences : the decoration is not of the filagree order 
and the statues are not a multitude. The architect 
loves the up-springing forms derived from the north, 
but he likewise loves the solid forms bequeathed to 
him by ancient tradition. If, in the interior, he masses 
columns together in piers, if he spins out and surrounds 
the windows with trefoils and mullions, if he curves the 
windows into ogives, he suspends aloft the aerial rotun- 
dity of the dome, he garlands his capitals with the Co- 
rinthian acanthus and diffuses throughout his work an 
air of joyousness and strength through the firmness 
of his forms, an appropriate distribution of light and a 
lustrous assortment of marbles. His church is christian, 
but of a Christianity other than that of the north, less 
grandiose and less impassioned, but less morbid and 
less violent, as if the sprightliness innate in the Italian 



44 



PERUGIA AND ASSISI. 



genius and the early impulse of laic culture had tempered 
the sublime phrensy of the middle ages, and preserved 
for the soul a hope on earth by leaving to it an issue in 
heaven. Of what' avail are rules ? and how insignifi- 
cant are the barriers of the schools ? Here are men 
who stood with one foot in the renaissance and the other 
in the middle age, diverted both ways, so that their 
work could not fail to miscarry and contradict itself. 
It does not miscarry, and its contradictions harmonize. 
And for this reason, that, in their breast,both sentiments 
operated energetically and sincerely ; that suffices for 
good work ; life begets life. 

You enter. The same marriage of ideas reappears 
in all the details. On each side of the door they have 
set up two admirable corinthian columns, but they have 
appropriated the Greek column by clothing the shaft 
with a profusion of small nude figures, hippogriffs, birds, 
and acanthus leaves interlaced and winding about to 
the top. — Three paces farther on are two charming 
holy- water fonts, two small columns decked with grapes, 
figures and garlands, each bearing on its top a cup of 
white marble. One, they say, is antique ; the other 
must be of about the beginning of the fifteenth cen- 
tury. The heads and torsions of these small figures 
remind one of Albert Durer ; the feet and knees are some- 
what salient ; they are naked females with their hands tied 
behind their backs ; the artist in order to obtain true 
action does not fear to sHghtly disfigure the breast. 
Thus is developed between Nicholas of Pisa and 
Jacopo della Querela an entire school of sculpture, a 
complete art, already perfect like a healthy lively child 
struggling in its catholic swaddling clothes. 

Finally, there is the celebrated pulpit of Nicholas of Pi- 
sa, the renovator of sculpture (1266). What can be more 
precious than these early works of the modern mind ? 
Our true ancestors are here, and one craves to know 
the way in which, at this early dawn, they compre- 



THE PULPIT. 45 

liencled man as we of to-day regard liim ; for, when 
an artist creates a type, it is as if he expressed by flesh 
and bones his conception of human nature ; and this 
conception once popular, the rest follows. I have no 
words to express the originality and richness of inven- 
tion displayed in this pulpit. It is as peculiar as it is 
beautiful. The pedestals consist of honesses, each 
holding a lamb in its jaws, or sucked by its young ; the 
quaint symbolism of the middle ages is here apparent ; 
but from the bodies of these lionesses spring eight 
small, pure Avhite columns expanding into a rich cluster 
of leaves, entirely original in taste, and which join to- 
gether in trefoils supporting a sort of octagonal arch 
or coffer of the simplest and most natural form possi- 
ble. On the entablature of each column sits a woman ; 
several wear the crowns of empresses, and all hold in- 
fants that are whispering to them in their ears. One 
loses sight of their being of stone, so animated is their 
expression ; it is more decided than in the antique. In 
this joj'ousness of primitive invention the new concep- 
tions so suddenly obtained are dwelt on to excess ; it is 
a pleasure to perceive, for the first time, a soul, and the 
attitude which manifests that soul ! Ideas did not 
abound in those days, and they clung all the closer to 
those they had. Through a striking innovation the 
body, neck, and head, somewhat too large, have a sort 
of Doric heaviness ; but this only adds to their vigor. 
Leaving behind him the meagre, ascetic saint, the art- 
ist, in imitation of the antique bas-reliefs, abeady con- 
structs the firm bony framework, fine, well-proportioned 
limbs, and the healthy flesh of renaissance figures. In 
northern sculptures, the physiognomies and attitudes of 
northern artists, when their genius blooms out in the 
fifteenth century,* are delicate, pensive, emotional, and 



* See the sculptures of the church of Brou, of Strasbourg cathedral, 
and the tomb of the Duke of Brittany at Nantes. 



46 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. 

always ingeniously personal. These, on the contrary, 
display the simplicity, breadth, and gravity of ancient 
pagan heads. It seems that the Italian, as he at this 
moment first opens his mouth, resumes the grave, man- 
ly discourse arrested twelve hundred years before on the 
lips of his brothers of Greece and of his ancestors of 
Rome. 

On the panels of the pulpit a labyrinth of crowded 
figures — a long octagonal procession, the Nativity, the 
Passion, and the Las-t Judgment, — envelop the marble 
with their marble covering. Apostles and virgins 
stand or sit on the angles, uniting and separating the 
diverse incidents of the legend. The margins are filled 
with a delicate and rich vegetation of marble inter- 
twined with arabesque and with foliage, a most luxuri- 
ous display of hght and complicated ornaments. One 
recoils astonished at this richness, and then perceives 
that he is walking on figures. The entire floor of the 
church is incrusted with them ; it is a mosaic of charac- 
ters seemingly traced with a pencil on the broad slabs. 
There are some of all ages, from the birth of art to its 
maturity. Figures, processions, combats, castles, and 
landscapes ; the feet tread on scenes and men belonging 
to the fourteenth and the two following centuries. The 
most ancient, indeed, are rigid, like feudal tapestries: 
Samson rending the lion's jaw, Absalom suspended by 
his hair, with large, open, idiotic eyes, and the murdered 
Innocents, — reminding one of the manikins of the mis- 
sals : but, as one advances he sees life animating the 
limbs. The grand white sibyls, on the black pavement 
display the nobleness and gravity of goddesses. Innu- 
merable heads impress one with their breadth and 
firmness of character. The artist as yet sees nothing 
in the human organism but its general framework ; he 
is not distracted as we are by a multiplicity of grada- 
tions, by the knowledge of an infinity of spiritual modi- 
fications and innumerable changes of physiognomy. 



BECCAFUMI. 47 

For tin's reason he can produce beings who, through 
their calmness, seem to be superior to the agitations of 
life. A primitive soul creates primitive souls. In the 
time of Raphael this art is complete : and the greatest 
of the three niello artists on stone, Beccafumi, has 
covered the space around the high altar and the pave- 
ment of the cupola with his designs. His half-naked 
Eve, his Israelites slain for espousing the Midianite 
women, his Abraham sacrificing, are superb figures of 
a wholly pagan conception, — often with torsos and at- 
titudes like those of Michael Angelo, but yet simple. 
It is only at that time that they knew how to make 
bodies.* 

The great man himself has worked here : they attrib- 
ute to him an admirable little chapel in which small 
figures appear, ranged above each other in shell niches 
amongst light arabesques and winding over the white 
marble. His predecessors, the most glorious restorers 
of art, keep him company ; under the altar, in a low 
chapel, a " St. John" by Donatello, and vigorous fig- 
ures with knotted muscles and contorted necks impress 
one with their energy and youthfulness. To see this 
pavement, these walls, these altars thus filled and 
crowded, these files of figures and of heads ascending 
on the efflorescences of the capitals, extending in lines 
along the friezes and covering the entire field of view, it 
is evident that the arts of design were the spontaneous 
language of this epoch, that men spoke the language 
without effort, that it is the natural mould of their 
thought, that this thought and this imagination, fecund 
for the first time, blossomed outwardly with an in- 
exhaustible generation of forms, that they are like 
youths whose tongues are unloosed and who say too 
much because they have not spoken before. 

Too many beautiful or curious things is a constantly 

* See the cartoons in the Institute of the Fine Arts at Sienna. 



48 



PERUGIA AND ASSIST. 



recurring remark here ; for example the Lihraria ex- 
tending to the cathedral and built at the end of the fif- 
teenth century. Here are ten frescoes by Pinturicchio, 
the history of Pius 'II., several figures of females very 
chaste and very elegant, the work however being still 
literal and dry. The painter preserves the costumes of 
the time, the emperor being represented in a gilded 
robe with the exaggerated display of the middle ages. 
Pinturicchio employed Raphael on his cartoons ; here 
the passage from the old to the new school is appar- 
ent ; from master to pupil the distance is infinite, and 
eyes that have just left the Vatican are fully sensible 
of it. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE ORIGIN OF PAINTING AT SIENNA AND PISA.— CREATIVE ENERGY 
IN SOCIETY AND IN THE ARTS.— DUCCIO DA SIENNA.— SIMONE 
MEMML— THE LORENZETTI.— MATTEO DA SIENNA. 

This Sienna, so fallen, was the early instructress in, 
and mistress of, the beautiful. Here and at Pisa we 
find the most ancient school. Nicholas of Pisa is Sien- 
nese by his father. The revivor of mosaic art in the 
thirteenth century is Jacopo da Turrita, a Franciscan 
monk of Sienna. The oldest Italian painting that is 
known is a crucified Christ with lank limbs and droop- 
ing head in the church at Assisi by Giunta, a Pisan.* 
Here, even, at San Domenico, Guido of Sienna painted 
in 1271 the pure sweet face of a Madonna which already 
far surpasses the mechanical Byzantine art. This cor- 
ner of Tuscany had freed itself from feudal barbarism 
before the rest of Italy. Abeady in 1100, Pisa, the first 
of maritime republics, traded and fought throughout the 
Levant, creating a school of architecture and building 
its cathedral. A century later Sienna attained to its 
full power and, in 1260, crushed Florence at the battle 
of Montaperto. They were so many new Athens, com- 
mercial and belligerent like the ancient city, and genius 
and love of beauty were born with them as with the 
old city in contact with enterprise and danger. Con- 
fined to our great administrative monarchies, restrained 
by the long literary and scientific traditions of which 
we wear the chain, we no longer find within us the force 
and creative audacity which then animated mankind. 
"We are oppressed by our work itself ; we limit with our 

* 1236. He wlioll}^ acquired his art here, about 1210. 

3 



50 



PERUGIA AND ASSISI. 



own hand onr own field of action. We aspire to con- 
tribute only one stone to the vast structure which suc- 
cessive generations have been erecting for so many- 
centuries. We do not know what active energies the 
human heart and intellect can generate, all that the 
human plant can put forth of root, branch and flower on 
encountering the soil and the season it needs. T\Tien 
the State was not a lumbering machine composed of 
bureaucratic springs and only intelligible to pure reason, 
but a city evident to the senses and adapted to the or- 
dinary capacity of the individual, man loved it, not 
spasmodically as at present, but daily, in every thought, 
and the part he took in public matters exalting his 
heart and understanding, planted in him the sentiments 
and ideas of a citizen and not those of a bourgeois. A 
shoemaker gave his money in order that the church of 
his city might be the most beautiful ; a weaver poHshed 
his sword in the evening determined that he would be 
not the subject but one of the lords of a rival city. 1 At 
a certain degTee of tension every soul is a vibrating 
cord ; it is only necessary to touch it to make it utter 
most beautiful tones. ! Let us picture to ourselves this 
nobleness and this energy diffused through every strata 
from top to bottom of a civic community ; let us add to 
this an estabhshed, increasing prosperity, that seK-con- 
fidence, that sentiment of joy which man experiences 
in a consciousness of strength ; let us banish fi'om be- 
fore our eyes that load of traditions and acquisitions 
which to-day embarrass us, as well as our wealth ; let us 
consider man free and self-surrendered in that desert 
due to degeneracy and we will then understand why 
here, as in the time of ^schylus, the arts arose in the 
midst of pubhc affairs ; why a fallow soil, bristhng with 
every political brier produced more than our well-tilled 
and registered fields ; why partisans, combatants and 
navigators at the height of their perils, their preoccu- 
j)ations and their ignorance, created and revived beauti- 



DUCCIO. 



51 



fill forms with an instinctive certainty, a fecundity of 
genius to wliicli the leisure and the erudition of the 
present day cannot attain. 

Slowly and painfully, beneath sculpture and architec- 
ture, painting develops itself ; this is a more complicated 
art than the others. Time was necessary in order to 
discover perspective ; a more sensual paganism was 
necessary in order to appreciate color. Man, at this 
epoch, is still quite christian ; Sienna is the city of the 
Virgin and places itself under her protection as Athens 
under that of Pallas ; with an entirely different moral 
standard and different legends the sentiment is the 
same, the local saint corresponding to the local divinity. 
"When Duccio in 1311 finished his Madonna the people 
in its joy came and took him from his studio and bore 
him in procession to the church ; the bells rang and 
many of the crowd carried tapers in thek hands. The 
painter inscribed under his picture, " Holy Mother of 
God, grant peace to the people of Sienna ; grant life to 
Duccio since he has thus painted thee !"^ His virgin 
testifies to a still unskilful hand, resembling the paint- 
ing of missals ; but around her and the infant she holds 
in her arms are several heads of saints already singu- 
larly beautiful and calm. Twenty-seven compartments, 
the entri^e story of Christ placed in the chapel facing it, 
accompany them. The sky is of gold and golden 
aurioles envelop the small figures. In this light the 
figures, almost black, seem like a remote vision, and 
when formerly they were over the altar, the kneeling 
people, who caught distant glimpses of their grave 
grouping, must needs have felt the mysterious emotion, 
the subhme anxiety of christian faith before these 
human apparitions profiled in multitudes in the bright- 
ness of eternal day. 



* Mater sancta Dei, sis causa Senis requiei 
Sis Ducio vita, te quia pinixit ita. 



53 PEEUGIA AND ASSISI. 

At tlie Institute of tlie Fine Arts are the pictures of 
Duccio and of his contemporaries and successors, 
the entire series, of the old masters of Sienna, and 
almost all taken from convents. In these pictures the 
nuns have scratched out the eyes of the demons and 
marred the faces of the persecutors with their nails 
and scissors. There is but little progress apparent ; 
the picture is yet an object of religion rather than of 
art, as may be well conceived by these thoughtless 
mutilations. It is at the hotel-de-ville of Sienna that 
this art is the most expressive. A gallery is always a 
gallery and works of art, like the productions of nature, 
lose haK their spirit when removed from their milieu. 
They must be seen along with their surroundings on 
the great wall whose nudity they covered, in the Kght 
of the ogive windows which illuminated them, and in 
the halls where the magistrates sat attired like their 
own personages. One might pass a couple of months 
in this palace studying feudal manners and customs 
without exhausting the ideas it provides : figures, cos- 
tumes, youthful cavaliers and veteran men-at-arms, 
lines of battle and religious processions. Colorless, 
grave, sombre even, rigid and stiff, such are the terms 
that enter the mind before this art. The fourteenth 
century is incarnated in these paintings ; we feel the 
constant presence of strife, the forced adhesion to the 
breast of danger, the abortive aim at more blooming 
beauty, and a freer harmony. This is the epoch of 
horrible intestine wars, of condottieri and the Yisconti, 
of deliberate torments and atrocious tyrannies, of a 
tottering faith and a crumbling mysticism and of the 
half-visible, experimental and fruitless renaissance. 
With his tragic, skeptical, sensual tales clad in Cicero- 
nian periods, Boccaccio is the faithful image of it.* 



* Compare his " Bride of the King of Garbe " with that of La 
Fontaine. 



SIENNESE AETISTS. 53 

In these are the characters and aspirations of the time. 
Simone Memmi, the painter of Laura and the friend of 
Petrarch, has painted in the great council chamber a 
Yirgin under a canopy surrounded by saints, grave 
and noble heads in the style of Giotto ; and a little 
farther on, Guido Kicci, a captain of the day, on a 
caparisoned horse — a realistic personage ; in these we 
see painting becoming laic."^ One of the Lorenzetti 
has heaped up near this conflicts of armor and combats 
of people ; and Spinello Spinelli, in the prior's hall, has 
represented the victory of Alexander II. over Frederic 
Barbarossa, the emperor lying stretched on his back 
before the pope,t also naval combats and processions 
of troops ; — art here is taking a historic and realistic 
turn. Ambrogio Lorenzetti, in the haU of archives, 
has portrayed good and bad government,^ a defile of 
grand personages beneath a reclining female, already 
beautiful, draped in white with a laurel branch over her 
blonde tresses, all this according to that Aristotle so 
denounced by Petrarch, and so dear to the liberal- 
minded now multiplying ; — it seems as if painting was 
running into a philosophical vein. I pass many others 
in which the taste for actual life, for local history, and 
for the antique — everything approaching the renais- 
sance — is visible ; but it is in vain — they fall short, 
merely standing on its threshold. A St. Barbara by 
Matteo da Sienne, in 1478, in the Church of St. Domi- 
nic, soft and pure but without relief and surrounded 
by gold, is simply a hieratic figure. And Leonardo da 
Yinci is aheady twenty-six ! How comprehend so long 
a halt ! How comes it that after Giotto, among so 
many groupings, painters do not succeed in putting on 
their canvases one solid form of flesh with life in it ? 
What stopped them half-way in spite of so many trials, 
after such a universal and happy early inspiration? 

* From 1316 to 1328. f 1400. t 1340. 



64 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. 

The question becomes irresistible when one contem- 
plates in this same palace, in the Institute of the Fine 
Arts, and in San Domenico, the frescoes of a complete 
artist, Sodoma, one of Raphael's contemporaries, and 
the j&rst master of the country. His scourged Christ is 
a superb nude torso, animated and suffering like an 
antique gladiator; his "St. Catherine in Ecstasy," his 
two male saints and female saint between them under 
an open portico, all his paintings, force the others back 
at once into the indeterminate region of incomplete, 
defective beings incapable of life. Once more why, 
having discovered painting, did men pass a hundred 
and fifty years with closed eyes without seeing the 
body? We must see Florence and Pisa. 



CHAPTER VII. 

FROM FLORENCE TO PISA.— SCENERY.— PISAN ARCHITECTURE.— THE 
DUOMO, LEANING TOWER, BAPTISTERY AND CAMPO-SANTO.— 
PAINTINGS OF THE XIV. CENTURY.— PIETRO D'ORVIETO.— SPI- 
NELLO SPINELLI, PIETRO LORENZETTI, AND THE ORCAGNA.— 
RELATIONSHIP OF THE ART OF THE XIV. CENTURY TO ITS 
SOCIETY.— WHY ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT REMAINS STATIONARY. 

Flobence, April 10. — I passed my first clay in the 
Uffizi : —but you do not require me to dwell on it now. 
I must not dissipate my impressions ; I have already 
had trouble enough to render them. 

On the following day I, accordingly, visited Pisa 
absorbed by the question which occupied me in quit- 
ting Sienna. It is only such matters that fill up time 
in travelling. One moves along wrapped up in one's 
ideas and other matters are let go. It seems to me that 
a man divides himself up into two parts : on the one 
hand a lower animal, a sort of necessary mechanical 
drudge who eats, drinks and walks for him without his 
knowing it, settles down comfortably in inns and in 
carriages, endures without letting him perceive it dis- 
agTeeable, petty annoyances, the platitudes of Kfe, and 
attends to all that pertains to his ordinary condition ; 
on the other hand a mind that is excited and strained 
all day by a vehement curiosity, stirred and traversed 
by germs of ideas, discarded and revived, in order to 
comprehend the sentiments of great men and of an- 
cient epochs. What made them feel in this way ? Is 
it true that they did feel in this way? So from ques- 
tion to question, at the end of a week, one listens to 
them and sees them face to face, forgetting the drudge, 
who becomes awkward and does his duty negligently. 
It is all the same to me — and to you : — but I am talking 
at random, — we are going to Pisa. 

A Tuscan landscape, agreeable and noble. The 



56 PEKUGIA AND ASSISI. 

grain, in blade, glows with freshness ; above it run files 
of elms, loaded with vines, bordering the channels by 
which they are irrigated. The country is an orchard 
fertilized by artificial streams. The waters flow co- 
piously fi'om the mountains and wind about limpid and 
blue in their too capacious bed of boulders. Signs of 
prosperity everywhere. The mountain slopes are dot- 
ted with thousands of white spots, so many villas and 
summer resorts, each with its bouquet of chestnut, 
olive and pine trees. Marks of taste and of comfort 
are evident in those that we observe in passing ; the 
farm-houses have a portico on the ground-floor, or on 
the first story, wherein to enjoy the evening breeze. 
All is productive ; cultivation extends far up the moun- 
tain and is continued here and there by the primitive 
forest. Man has not reduced the earth to a fleshless 
skeleton ; he has preserved, or renewed its vestment of 
verdure. As the train recedes, these terraces of soil, 
each with its own tint and culture, and farther on, the 
pale, vapory bordering of mountains, encompass the 
plain like a garland. The effect is not that of a grand- 
iose beauty, but harmonious and regulated. 

For the first time in Italy I see a true river in a true 
plain ; the Arno, yellow and turbulent, rolls along be- 
tween two long ranges of dingy houses. A mournful, 
neglected, meagrely populated, lifeless city, calling to 
mind one of our towns in decay, or set aside by a wan- 
dering civilization, like Aix, Poitiers or Eennes ; — such 
is Pisa. 

There are two Pisas : one ia which people have 
lapsed uito ennui, and live from hand to mouth since the 
decadence, which is in fact the entire city, except a re- 
mote corner ; the other is this corner, a marble sepul- 
chre where the Duomo, Baptistery, Leaning Tower and 
Campo-Santo silently repose Hke beautiful dead beings. 
This is the genuine Pisa, and in these relics of a departed 
life, one beholds a world. 



PISA. 57 

A renaissance before the renaissance, a second bud- 
ding almost antique of antique civilization, a preco- 
cious and complete sentiment of healthy, joyous beauty, 
a primrose after six centuries of snow — such are the 
ideas and the terms that rush through the mind. All 
is marble, and white marble, its immaculate brightness 
glowing in the azure. Everywhere appear grand, solid 
forms, the cupola, the full wall, balanced stories, the 
firmly-planted round or square mass ; but over these 
forms, revived from the antique, like delicate foliage re- 
freshing an old tree-trunk, is diffused an invention of 
their own in the shape of a covering of delicate columns 
supporting arcades that render the originality and 
grace of this architecture, thus renovated, indescribable. 

The most difficult thing in the arts is to discover a 
type of architecture. The Greeks and the middle ages 
produced one complete ; Imperial Eome and the six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries produced one half- 
complete. In order to find other types we are obliged 
to abandon Europe and European history and consider 
those of Egypt, Persia, India or China. Usually they 
testify to a completed civilization, to a profound trans- 
formation of all instincts and of all customs. Really, 
to change anj conception of a thing so general as form, 
what a change must be effected in the human brain ! 
Revolutions in painting and in literature have been 
much more frequent, much easier and much less sig- 
nificant. Figures traced on canvas, and characters 
portrayed in books will change five or six times with a 
people before its architecture can be changed. The 
mass to be moved is too great, and in the eleventh 
century, in the times of our first Capet kings, Pisa 
moves it without effort. 

There was a dawn then, as in Greece in the sixth 
century before Christ. Everything then burst forth 
radiantly like light at the first hour. " The Pisans," 
said Yasari, " being at the apex of their grandeur and 

3* 



58 PEKUGIA AND ASSIST. 

of their progress, being lords of Sardinia, Corsica and 
the island of Elba, and their city being filled with 
great and powerful citizens, brought from the most dis- 
tant places trophies and great spoil." At Byzantium, 
in the Orient, in ancient cities still filled with the 
ruins of Greek elegance and of Roman magnificence, 
among Jews and Arabs their visitors and their cus- 
tomers, in contact with foreign ideas, this young com- 
munity started up and elaborated its own conceptions as 
formerly the Greek cities in contact with Phenicia, 
Carthage, the Lydians and the Egyptians. In 1083 in 
order to honor the Yirgin, who had given them a vic- 
tory over the Saracens of Sardignia, they laid the foun- 
dations of their Duomo. 

This edifice is almost a Eoman basilica, that is to 
say a temple surmounted by another temple, or, if you 
prefer it, a house having a gable for its facade which 
gable is cut off at the peak to support another house 
of smaller dimensions. Five stories of columns entirely 
cover the fa9ade with their superposed porticoes. Two 
by two they stand coupled together to support small 
arcades ; all these pretty shapes of white marble under 
their dark arcades form an aerial population of the 
utmost grace and novelty. Nowhere here are we con- 
scious of the dolorous reverie of the mediaeval north ; it 
is the fete of a young nation which is awakening, and, in 
the gladness of its recent prosperity, honoring its gods. 
It has collected capitals, ornaments, entire columns 
obtained on the distant shores to which its wars and 
its commerce have led it, and these ancient fragments 
enter into its work without incongruity ; for it is 
instinctively cast in the ancient mould, and only 
developed with a tinge of fancy on the side of 
finesse and the pleasing. Every antique form reap- 
pears, but reshaped in the same sense by a fresh and 
original impulse. The outer columns of the Greek 



THE CATHEDKAL OF PISA. 



59 



temple are reduced, multiplied and uplifted in tlie air, 
and, from a support have become an ornament. The 
Eoman or Byzantine dome is elongated and its natural 
heaviness diminished under a crown of slender columns 
with a mitre ornament, which girds it midway with its 
delicate promenade. On the two sides of the great 
door two Corinthian columns are enveloped with luxu- 
rious foliage, calyxes and twining or blooming acan- 
thus ; and from the threshold we see the church with 
its files of intersecting columns, its alternate courses of 
black and white marble and its multitude of slender 
and brilliant forms, rising upward like an altar of can- 
delabra. A new spirit appears here, a more delicate 
sensibility ; it is not excessive and disordered as in the 
north, and yet it is not satisfied with the grave sim- 
plicity, the robust nudity of antique architecture. It 
is the daughter of a pagan mother, healthy and gay, 
but more womanly than its mother. 

She is not yet an adult, sure in all her steps, — she is 
somewhat awkward. The lateral facades on the exte- 
rior are monotonous ; the cupola within is a reversed 
funnel of a peculiar and disagreeable form. The 
junction of the two arms of the cross is unsatisfactory 
and so many modernized chapels dispel the charm due 
to purity, as at Sienna. At the second glance however 
all this is forgotten, and we again regard it as a com- 
plete whole. Four rows of corinthian columns, sur- 
mounted with arcades, divide the church into five naves, 
and form a forest. A second passage, as richly crowded, 
traverses the former crosswise, and, above the beautiful 
grove, files of still smaller columns prolong and inter- 
sect each other in order to uphold in the air the pro- 
longation and intersection of the quadruple gallery. 
The ceiling is flat ; the windows are small, and for the 
most part, without sashes ; they allow the walls to re- 
tain the grandeur of their mass and the solidity of their 



60 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. 

— - V - 

position 5^ and among these long, straight and simple 
lines, in this natural light, the innumerable shafts glow 
with the serenity of an antique temple. *^ . 

It is not, however, wholly an antique temple, and 
hence its pecuHar charm : ia the rear of the choir a 
grand figure of Christ in a golden robe, and the Yii'gin, 
and another saint, smaller in size, occupy the entire 
concave of the absis."^ His face is serene and sad ; on 
this golden background, in the paleness of the dim 
light, he looks hke a vision. Countless paintings and 
structures of the middle ages assuredly correspond to 
ecstatic yearnings. — Other fi'agments indicate the de- 
cadence and utter barbarism out of which they sprung. 
One of the ancient bronze doors still remains covered 
with rude and horrible bronze bas-reliefs. Behold what 
the descendants of the statuaries preserved of antique 
tradition, what the human mind had become in the 
chaos of the tenth century, at the time of the Hungarian 
invasions of Marozzia and of Theodora : sad, mournful, 
dwarfed, dislocated and mechanical figures, God the 
Father and six angels, three on one side and three on 
the other, all leaning at the same angle like the figures 
scribbled by children ; the twelve apostles ranged in 
file, six in fi'ont and six in the intermediate spaces, are 
Hke those round ruigs with holes in them for eyes and 
long appendages for arms which boys scrawl on the 
covers of their copy-books. On the other hand, the 
entrance doors, sculptured by John of Bologna (1602), 
are full of life : leaves of the rose, the vine, the medlar, 
the orange and the laurel, with their berries, fruits and 
flowers, amongst biixls and animals, twine around and 
make frames for energetic and spirited figures and 
groups of an imposing aspect. This abundance of ac- 
curate living forms is peculiar to the sixteenth century : 
it discovered natiu^e the same time as it discovered 

* By Jacopo Turrita, the restorer of mosaic art. 



THE BAPTISTERY AND LEANING TOWER. 



Gl 



man. BetweSH these two doors occurs tlie labor of five 
centimes. 

Nothing more can be added in relation to the Bap- 
tistery or the Leaning Tower ; the same ideas prevail 
in these, the same taste, the same style. The former is 
a simple, isolated dome, the latter a cylinder, and each 
has an outward dress of small columns. And yet each 
has its own distinct and expressive physiognomy ; but 
description and writing consume too much time, and 
too many technical terms are requisite to define their 
differences. I note, simply, the inclination of the 
Tower. Some suppose that, when half constructed, 
the tower sank in the earth on one side, and that the 
architects continued on ; seeing that they did continue 
this deflection was only a partial obstacle to them. In 
any event, there are other leaning towers in Italy, at 
Bologna, for example ; voluntarily or involuntarily this 
feeling for oddness, this love of paradox, this yielding 
to fancy, is one of the characteristics of the middle 
ages. 

In the centre of the Baptistery stands a superb font 
with eight panels ; each panel is incrusted with a 
rich complicated flower in full bloom, and each flower 
is different. Around it a circle of large corinthian 
columns supports round-arch arcades ; most of them 
are antique and are ornamented with antique bas- 
reliefs : Meleager with his barking dogs, and the nude 
torsos of his companions hi attendance on christian 
mysteries. On the left stands a pulpit similar to that 
of Sienna, the first work of Nicholas of Pisa (1260), a 
simple marble coffer supported by marble columns and 
covered with sculptures. The sentiment of force and 
of antique nudity comes out here in striking features. 
The sculptor comprehended the postures and torsions 
of bodies. His figures, somewhat massive, are grand 
and simple ; he fi'equently reproduces the tunics and 
folds of the Roman costume ; one of his nude person- 



63 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. 

ages, a sort of Hercules bearing a young lion on liis 
shoulders, has the broad breast and muscular tension 
which the sculptors of the sixteenth century admired. 
What a change in human civilization, what an accelera- 
tion of it, had these restorers of ancient beauty, these 
young republics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 
these precocious creators of modern thought been left 
to themselves like the ancient Greeks? had they fol- 
lowed their natural bent, had mystic tradition not 
intervened to limit and divert their efforts, had laic 
genius developed amongst them as formerly in Greece 
amidst liberal, rude and healthy institutions, and not, as 
two centuries later, in the midst of the servitude and 
corruptions of the decadence ? 

The last of these edifices, the Campo-Santo, is a 
cemetery, the soil of which, brought from Palestine, is 
holy ground. Four high walls of polished marble sur- 
round it with their white and crowded panels. Inside, 
a square gallery forms a promenade opening into the 
court through arcades trellised with ogive windows. 
It is filled with funereal monuments, busts, inscriptions 
and statues of every form and of every age. Nothing 
could be simpler and nobler. A framework of dark 
wood supports the arch overhead, and the crest of the 
roof cuts sharp against the crystal sky. At the angles 
are four rustling cypress trees, tranquilly swayed by 
the breeze. Grass is growing in the court with a wild 
freshness and luxuriance. Here and there a climbing 
flower twined around a column, a small rosebush, or 
a shrub glows beneath a gleam of sunshine. There is 
no noise ; this quarter is deserted ; only now^ and then 
is heard the voice of some promenader which rever- 
berates as under the vault of a church. It is the 
veritable cemetery of a free and christian city ; here, 
before the tombs of the great, people might well 
reflect over death and public affairs. 

The entire wall of the interior is covered with 



THE CAMPO-SANTO. i3 

frescoes ; tlie pictorial art of the fourteenth century 
has no more complete charnel-house. The two schools 
of Florence and Sienna here combine, and it is a 
curious spectacle to observe their art halting between 
two tendencies, arrested in its powerlessness like a 
passive chrysalis no longer a worm and not jei a 
butterfly. The ancient sentiment of the divine world 
is enfeebled, and the fi-esh sentiment of the natural 
world is still weak. On the right of the entrance 
Pietro d'Orvieto has painted an enormous Christ, 
which, except the feet and the head, almost disappears 
under an immense disk representing the world and the 
revolving spheres ; this is the spirit of primitive sym- 
bolism. Alongside, in his story of the creation and of 
the first couple, Adam and Eve are big, well-fed, 
plump, realistic bodies, evidently copied from the nude. 
A little farther on Cain and Abel, in their sheepskins, 
display vulgar countenances taken from life in the 
streets or in a fray. Feet, legs and composition 
remain barbarian, and this incipient realism goes no 
farther. On the other side, and with the same incon- 
giTiities, a grand fresco by Pietro Lorenzetti repre- 
sents ascetic life. Forty or fifty scenes are given in 
the same picture : an anchorite reading, another in a 
cave, another roosting in a tree, here one preaching 
with no other clothes on than his hair, and there one 
tempted by a woman and flogged by the devil. A few 
large heads with gray and white beards show the rustic 
clumsiness of ploughmen ; but the landscapes, the 
accessories, and even most of the figures, are grotesque ; 
the trees are feathers, and the rocks and the lions seem 
to belong to a five-franc menagerie. Farther on Spi- 
nello d'Arezzo has painted the story of St. Ephesus. 
His pagans, half Eomans and half cavaliers, wear 
armor arranged and colored according to mediaeval 
taste. Man}^ of the attitudes in his battles are true, as, 
for instance, a man overthrown on his face, and another 



64 PEKUGIA AND ASSIST. 

seized by the beard. Several are figures of the day, 
for instance a pretty page in green holding a sword, 
and a trim yonng squire in a blue pourpoint with 
pointed shoes and * well-drawn calves; observation and 
composition, an attempt to impart interest and dramatic 
variety, begin to appear. But it is only a beginning, it 
is simply a pasteboard sketch. Relief, flexibility, 
action, the rich vitality of firm flesh, a feehng for a 
balanced organization and the innumerable laws which 
maintain natural objects is still remote ; we have 
imagery striving after, but which does not yet attain 
to art. 

Nothing more clearly illustrates this ambiguous 
state of minds than a fresco placed near one of the 
angles called the " Triumph of Death," by Orcagna .^ 
At the base of a mountain a cavalcade of lords and 
ladies arrives ; these are the contemporaries of Frois- 
sart : they wear the hoods and ermines and the gay va- 
riegated robes of the time, and have falcons and dogs 
and other appurtenances such as Valentine Yisconti 
went to find at the residence of Louis of Orleans. The 
heads are not less real : this delicate trim chatelaine 
on horseback, and veiled, is a true lady, pensive and 
melancholy, of the mediaeval epoch. These gay and 
powerful ones of the century suddenly come upon the 
corpses of three kings iu the three degrees of corruption, 
each iu his open grave, one swoUen, the other gnawed 
by worms and serpents, and the other abeady exposing 
the bones of his skeleton. They halt and tremble : 
one of them leans over his horse's neck to obtain a 
better view, and another stops his nostrils ; this is a 
"morality" like those then given in the playhouses. 
The artist aims to instruct his public, and to this effect 
he masses around the principal group every possible 
commentary. On the summit of the mountain are 

* Deceased about 1376. 



OECAGNAS FRESCOES. 



65 



monks in tlieir hermitages, one reading and another 
milking a fawn, and, in their midst, are beasts of the 
desert, a weasel and a crane. " You good people who 
gaze on this, behold the Christian, contemplative life, 
the holy living disdained by the mighty of the earth ! " 
But death is present who restores the equilibrium : he is 
advancing in the shape of an old graybeard with a 
scythe in his hand in order to cut down the gay, the 
voluptuous, the young lords and ladies, fat and 
frizzled, who are diverting themselves in a grove. 
"With a sort of cruel irony he is mowing down those 
who fear him, and is avoiding those who implore him ; 
a troop of the maimed, of cripples, of the blind, of 
beggars vainly summon him; his scythe is not for 
them. Such is the way of this frail lug-ubrious, 
miserable world ; and the end to which it is tending is 
more lugubrious still. This is universal destruction, a 
yawning abyss into which all, each in turn, are to be 
confusedly ingulphed. Queens, kings, popes and 
archbishops with their ministers and their crowns lie 
in heaps, and tlieir souls, in the shape of nude infants, 
issue fi'om their bodies to take their place in the terri- 
ble eternity. Some are welcomed by angels, but the 
greater number are seized by demons, hideous and base 
figures, with bodies of goats and toads, and with bats' 
ears and the jaws and claws of cats — a grotesque pack 
gambolling and capering around their quarry : a singu- 
lar commingling of dramatic passion, morbid philos- 
oph}^, accurate observation, awkward triviality and 
picturesque impotence. 

The fresco next to this, "The Last Judgment," is 
similar. Many of the faces bear an expression of de- 
spair, and of extraordinary stupor, — for instance, an 
angel in the centre, crouched down, and, his eyes 
opened wide and rigid with horror, gazing on the 
eternal judgments ; another, a hairy recluse thrown vio- 
lently backward, with outstretched arms appealing to 



66 



PEEUGIA AND ASSIST. 



Christ the mediator, and a condemned woman clinging 
convulsively to another. All these personages, how- 
ever, are simply figures cut out of paper ; the forms 
are arranged mechanically, in rows like onions, five 
stories high, the souls issuing from square holes like 
trap-doors in a theatre stage ; the art is as inadequate 
as the sentiment is profound, and, so soon as the senti- 
ment begins to decline this inadequacy becomes 
platitude and barbarism. 

We realize this right alongside in the " Hell" of Ber- 
nardo Orcagna, which completes the work of his brother 
Andrea. It is a grave in compartments, arranged so 
as to frighten little children. In the centre, a huge 
gTeen Satan of glowing metal with a ram's head is 
roasting souls in a furnace inside of himself, from which 
they are seen to issue through the fissures. Around him 
in a confused medley of flames and serpents, appear naked 
dolls in the hands of hairy little devils who are flaying, 
disembowelling and dismembering them, tearing out 
their tongues and spitting them like chickens, the whole 
forming a great kitchen stew. — A poetic world from 
which all poetry is abstracted, a sublime tragedy con- 
verted into a parade of executioners and a workshop 
of torture is what this talentless Dante has depicted 
on these walls. The great era of Christian faith ter- 
minated with the scandals of the Avignon popes and 
the convulsions of that schism ; scholasticism dies out 
and Petrarch ridicules it. A few paroxysms of morbid 
fervor, — the flagellators of France, the white penitents 
of Italy, the visions of Saint Catherine and the au- 
thority of St. Bernard at Sienna, and later the evan- 
gelical dictatorship of Savonarola at Florence, — indi- 
cate at most the rare and violent palpitations of a de- 
parting life. The heretics of Germany and England 
undermine the church ; the Averrhoeists of Italy un- 
dermine religion, while, on all sides, the mysticism 
which had supported religion and ennobled the church 



obcagna's frescoes. 67 

becomes decrepit and falls. Petrarch, the last of the 
Platonic worshippers, views his sonnets as amusements, 
devoting himself to reviving antiquity, to discovering 
manuscripts, and to writing latin verses and prose, and 
with him we see commencing that long succession of 
humanists who are about to introduce pagan culture 
into Italy. Popular Hterature, meanwhile, changes its 
tone ; practical historians, amusing story-tellers in 
prose, — the Yillani, the Sacchetti, the Pecoroni and the 
Boccaccios — substitute merry or ordinary converse for 
a sublime and ^dsionary poesy. The serious declines, 
for people are disposed to be gay ; Boccaccio's poesy 
consists of gallant and descriptive novels of adventure, 
and around him, in France and in England, is displayed 
in poets and chroniclers, an interminable string of 
chivalric cavalcades, of princely sumptuousness and of 
amatory discourses. There is no longer any grand, 
austere idea to excite the enthusiasm of men. In the 
midst of the wars and the disastrous dislocations which 
counter-check or dismantle governments those who 
look beyond seigneurial pomp and revelry see nothing 
with Avhich to control man but Fortune, " a monstrous 
image with a cruel and terrible face, and a hundred 
arms, some elevating men to the high places of worldly 
honor, and others rudely grasping them in order to hurl 
them to the ground ;" alongside of her is blind Death 
" who grinds all into dust, kings and cavaliers, emperors 
and popes, many lords who live for pleasure and lovely 
ladies and mistresses of knights who cry aloud and 
sink in anguish." * These expressions of a contempo- 
rary seem to describe the fresco of Orcagna. The 
same impression, indeed, is there found stamped on all 
hearts ; a bitter sentiment of human instability and 
misery, an ironical view of passing existence and of 
worldly pleasure, the Liberation of laic opinion freed at 

* Piers Plowman. 



68 PEEUGLl AND ASSISI. 

last from mystic illusion, the intemperance of long- 
bridled senses in quest of enjo^^ment — do we find aught 
else in Boccaccio ? He places death side by side with 
voluptuousness, the atrocious details of the plague 
side by side with the frolics of the alcove. Such is 
truly the spirit of the time ; and here I imagine we at 
last arrive at the cause which for so long a time re- 
tarded the progress of painting in Italy. If, during a 
hundred and fifty years, painting, like literature, re- 
mained passive after the vigorous advance of its early 
progress, it is owing to the public mind having re- 
mained inactive likewise. Mystic sentiment becoming 
less fervid it was no longer adequately sustained in 
order to express the pure mystic life. Pagan senti- 
ment being only in embryo it was not yet far enough 
advanced to portray the broad pagan life. It was 
abandoning its first road and stiU remained at the en- 
trance of the second. It was abandoning ideal faces, 
innocent or ravished physiognomies, the glorious 
possessions of incorporeal souls ranged like visions 
against the splendor of divine light. It descended to 
the earth, delineating portraits, contemporary costume, 
interesting scenes, and expressed common or dramatic 
sentiments. It no longer addressed monks but laymen. 
These laymen however still had one foot in the clois- 
ter, and many long j^ears were necessary before their 
admiration and sympathies, clinging to the super- 
natural world, could rally in combined force and effort 
around the natural world. It was necessary that the 
terrestrial Hfe should gradually ennoble itself in their 
own eyes even to appearing to them to be the only 
true and important one. It was necessary that a 
universal and insensible transformation should in- 
terest them in the laws and actual proportions of things, 
in the anatomical structure of the body, in the vitality 
of naked limbs, in the expansion of animal joyousness 
and in the triumph of virile energies. Then only 



IMPRESSIVE MONUMENTS. "» 

could tliey comprehend, suggest and demand accurate 
perspective, substantial modelling, brilliant and melting 
color, bold and harmonious form, all parts of complete 
painting, and that glorification of physical beauty which 
demands sympathetic spirits in order that it may at- 
tain to perfection and find its echo. 

They devoted a century and a half to this great step, 
and painting, like a shadow accompanying its body, 
faithfully repeated the uncertainties of their advance in 
the slowness of its progress. In the middle of the 
fifteenth century Parro Spinelli and Lorenzo Bicci 
faithfully copy the grotesque style ; Fra Angelico, nur- 
tured in the cloister like a rare flower in a conservatory, 
still succeeds in the purest of mystic visions ; even with 
his pupil Gozzoli, who has filled up the whole side of a 
wall here with his frescoes, w^e detect, as in the confluence 
of two ages, the last flow of the christian tide beneath 
the fulness o£ the pagan flood. During these two 
hundred j^ears innumerable paintings are produced to 
clothe the nudity of churches and monasteries ; this 
period having elapsed they are regarded with indif- 
ference ; they fall off along with the plaster, the masons 
scratch them away, they disappear beneath whitewash, 
the restorers make them over afresh. The remains we 
now have of them are fragments, and only in our day 
have interest and attention been again directed to 
them ; antiquarians have dug down to the geological 
stratum which bore them and we now see in them the 
remains of an imperfect flora extinguished by the inva- 
sion of a more vigorous vegetation. — The eyes, again 
turning upward, rest on the four structures of ancient 
Pisa, solitary on a spot where the grass grows, and on 
the pallid lustre of the marbles profiled against the di- 
vine azure. What ruins, and what a cemetery is 
history! "What human pulsations of which no other 
trace is left but a form imprinted on a fragment of 
stone ! What indifference in the smile of the placid 



70 PERUGLi AND ASSISI. 

firmament, and what cruel beauty in that luminous cu- 
pola stretched, in turn, like a common funereal dais 
over the generations that have fallen ! We read similar 
ideas in books, and, in the pride of youth, we have con- 
sidered them as rhetoric ; but when man has lived the 
half of his career, and, turning in upon himself, he 
reckons up how many of his ambitions he has subdued, 
how much he has wTung out of his hopes, and all the 
dead that lie buried in his heart, the sternness and 
magnificence of nature appear to him as one, and the 
heavy sobbing of inward grief forces him to recognize 
a higher lamentation, that of the human tragedy which, 
century after century, has buried so many combatants 
in one common grave. He stops, feeling on his head 
as upon that of those gone before, the hand of inexorable 
powers, and he comprehends his destiny. This hu- 
manity, of which he is a member, is figured in the 
Niobe at Florence. Around her, her sons and her 
daughters, all those she loves, fall incessantly under 
the arrows of invisible archers. One of them is cast 
down on his back and his breast, transpierced, is 
throbbing ; another, still living, stretches his powerless 
hands up to the celestial murderers ; the youngest con- 
ceals his head under his mother's robe. She, mean- 
while, stern and fixed stands hopeless, her eyes raised 
to heaven, contemplating with admiration and horror 
the dazzling and deadly nimbus, the outstretched arms, 
the merciless arrows and the implacable serenity of the 
gods. 



BOOK 11. 



FLOEENCE. 



CHAPTER I. 

. STREET SCENES.— FLOEENTINE CHAEACTER. 

A CITY complete in itself, having its own arts and 
edifices, lively and not too crowded, a capital and not 
too large, beautiful and gay — such is the first idea of 
Florence. 

One wanders along carelessly over the large slabs 
with which the streets are paved. From the Palazzo 
Strozzi to the Piazza Santa Trinita there is a humming 
crowd constantly renewing itself. In hundreds of 
places we see the constantly recurring signs of an 
agreeable and intellectual life : cafes almost brilliant, 
print-shops, alabaster p'letra dura and mosaic establish- 
ments, bookstores, an elegant reading-room and a 
dozen theatres. Of course the ancient city of the 
fifteenth century still exists and constitutes the body 
of the city; but it is not mouldy as at Sienna, con- 
signed to one corner as at Pisa, befouled as in Rome, en- 
veloped in mediaeval cobwebs or plastered with modern 
life as if with a parasite incrustation. The past is here 
reconciled with the present ; the refined vanity of the 
monarchy is perpetuated by the refined invention of 
the republic ; the paternal government of the German 
grand-dukes is perpetuated by the pompous government 
of the Italian grand-dukes. At the close of the last 
and the beginning of this century Florence formed a 
Httle oasis in Italy, and was called gli felicissimi staii. 
People built as formerly, held festivals and conversed 
together ; the social spii'it had not perished as else- 
where under a rude despotic hand or through the 



72 



FLOKENCE. 



respectable inertia of ecclesiastical rigor. The Floren- 
tine, as formerly the Athenian under the Caesars, 
remained a critic and a wit, proud of his good taste, 
his sonnets, his academies, of the language which gave 
law to Italy, and of his undisputed judgments in 
matters of literature and the fine arts. There are 
races so refined that they cannot wholly degenerate ; 
mind is an integrant force with them ; they may 
become corrupt but never be destroyed ; they may be 
converted into dilletanti and sophists but not into 
mutes and fools. It is then, indeed, that their under- 
lying nature appears ; we recognize that with them, as 
with the Greeks of the Lower Empire, intelligence 
constitutes character, since it persists after this has 
deteriorated. Already under the first Medicis the 
keenest enjoyment is that of the intellect, and the 
leading mental characteristics are gaiety and subtlety. 
Gravity subsides ; like the Athenians in the time of 
Demosthenes the Florentines care only for amusement, 
and, like Demosthenes, their leaders admonish them. 
" Your life," says Savonarola, " is passed in bed, in 
gossiping, in promenading, in orgies, and in debauch- 
ery." And Bruto the historian adds that they infuse 
"politeness into slander and gossip, and sociability 
into criminal complaisance ;" he reproaches them for 
doing " everything languidly, effeminately, irregularly, 
and of accepting indolence and baseness as the rule of 
their life." These are severe expressions. All the mor- 
alists use the same language, and elevate their voices 
in order to make themselves heard. It is clear, how- 
ever, that, toward the middle of the fifteenth century, 
the trained and cultivated senses, expert in all matters 
of pleasure, ostentation and emotion, are sovereign in 
Florence. We realize this in their art. Their renais- 
sance has in it nothing of the austere or tragic. Only 
old palaces built of enormous blocks bristle with 
knotty bosses grated windows and obscure angles, 



STREET VIEWS. '^3 

indicating the insecurity of feudal life and the assaults 
they have undergone. Everywhere else a taste for 
elegant and joyous beauty declares itself. The princi- 
pal buildings are covered with marble from top to 
bottom. Loggia, open to air and sunshine, rest on 
Corinthian columns. We see that architecture eman- 
cipated itself immediately from the gothic, abstracting 
from it only one point of originality and of fancy, and 
that her natural tendency from the first led her to the 
light and simple forms of pagan antiquity. You walk 
on and you observe the apse of a church peopled with 
intelligent and expressive statues ; a solid wall where 
the pretty Italian arcade is inlaid and developed into a 
border ; a file of slender columns whose tops expand in 
order to support the roof of a promenade, and, termi- 
nating a street, a panel of green hill, or some blue 
mountain top. I have just passed an hour on the 
square of the " Annunziata," seated on a flight of 
steps. Opposite to me is a church, and on either side 
of this, a convent, all three with a peristyle of light 
haK-ionic, half-corinthian columns, terminating in ar- 
cades. Overhead are brown roofs of old tile intersect- 
ing the pure blue of the sky, and, at the end of a street, 
stretching away in the warm shadow, the eye is arrested 
by a round mountain. Within this frame, so natural 
and so noble, is a market ; stalls protected by white 
awnings contain rolls of drygoods ; countless women 
in violet shawls and straw hats come and go and are 
buying and chatting ; there are scarcely any beggars or 
ragged people ; the eyes are not saddened by specta- 
cles of misery and savage brutality ; the people seem 
to be at their ease and active without being excited. 
From the middle of this variegated crowd and these 
open airy stalls rises an equestrian statue, and near 
this, a fountain empties its waters into a basin of 
bronze. These contrasts are similar to those of Eome ; 
but instead of clashing they harmonize. The beautiful 

*4, 



"^4 FLOEENCE. 

is as original but it inclines to tlie pleasing and harmo- 
nious and not toward disproportion and enormity. 
You turn back. A beautiful stream of clear water, 
spotted here and {here with white sandbanks, flows by 
the side of a magnificent quay. Houses seeming to be 
palaces, modern and yet monumental, form a bordering 
to it. In the distance you observe trees donning 
their spring verdure, a soft and pleasing landscape like 
those of temperate climes ; beyond, rounded summits 
and hillsides, and still farther on, an amphitheatre of 
barren rocks. Florence lies in a mountain basin like a 
statuette in the middle of a vast fountain, and its stone 
lacework becomes silvery under the bright lustre of the 
evening reflections. You follow the course of the river 
and reach the Cascine. Fresh green and the delicate 
tintings of distant poplars undulate with charming 
sweetness against the blue mountains. Tall trees and 
dense evergreen hedges protect the promenader from 
the north wind. It is so pleasant, on the approach of 
spring, to feel one's self stirred by the fresh warm sun- 
shine ! The azure of the sky glows magnificently 
between the budding branches of the beeches, on the 
pale verdure of the ilex, and on the blue-tinted needles 
of the pine. Everywhere between gray trunks animated 
wdth sap are blooming tufts of shrubbery that have 
not succumbed to winter's sleep, and fresh blossoms, 
combining with their youthful vivacity, to fill the ave- 
nues with color and fragrance. The light laurel pro- 
files its grave tops against the river-bank, as in a picture, 
while the broad Arno tranquilly expands its ruddy 
gleaming waves in sunset glow. 

You leave the city and ascend an eminence in order 
to embrace it and its valley in one view in the rounded 
vase in which it lies : nothing could be more charming ! 
Comfort and prosperity are apparent on all sides. 
Thousands of country-houses dot the surface with their 
white spots, rising above each other from slope to slope 



SAN MINIATO. 75 

even to the mountain heights. On every declivity the 
tops of the oKve-trees cluster together like sober 
grazing flocks. The soil is supported by walls and 
forms terraces. Man's intelligent hand converts all to 
profit and at the same time into beauty. The soil, 
thus disposed, assumes an architectural shape ; 
gardens are grouped together in stories amongst 
balustrades, statues and fountains. There are no great 
forests, there is no luxuriance of abundant vegetation ; 
it is only northern eyes that need to feast themselves 
on the universal softness and freshness of vegetal growth ; 
the grouping of stones suffices for the Italians, and the 
neighboring mountain furnishes them, according to 
fanc}^, with beautiful white or bluish blocks, sober and 
refined in tone. They arrange them nobly in symmet- 
rical lines ; the marble fronts of the houses glisten in 
the transparent atmosphere, accompanied with a few 
grand trees always green. One can here enjoy sun- 
shine in winter and shade in summer, while the eye 
idly wanders over the surrounding landscape. 

Afar, in the distance, a gateway is seen, a campanile 
and a church. This is San Miniato, situated on a hill 
and developing its fagade of variegated marbles. This is 
one of the oldest churches in Florence, belonging to the 
eleventh century. On entering it you find an almost 
latin basilica, capitals almost grecian, and light 
polished shafts bearing round arcades. The crypt is 
similar. There is nothing lugubrious about it or over- 
burdened ; ever the upspringing column terminating in 
harmonious curves. Florentine architecture from the 
very first derives or resumes the antique tradition of 
Kght and solid forms. Early historians call Florence 
" the noble city, the daughter of Kome." It seems as 
if the melancholy spirit of the middle ages had only 
glided over it. She is an elegant pagan, who, as soon 
as she first thought, declared herself, at first timidly 
and afterward openly, elegant and pagan. 



CHAPTEE II 

THEATEES.— LITERATURE.— POLITICS.— EST WHAT RESPECT THE ITAL- 
IAN DIFFERS FROM THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.— THE PEASANT 
IN RELATION TO THE NOBLE.— THE LAYMAN IN RELATION TO 
THE PRIEST. 

Visits and Eyenings at the Theatres. — There are 
eight or ten theatres, which shows great fondness for 
amusement. They are convenient and well ventilated ; 
a wide passage surrounds the parquette and the orches- 
tra ; the audience is not stifled as at Paris ; several of 
the houses are handsome, w^ell decorated and simple : 
good taste seems to be natural in this country. In 
other respects it is different; seats are at such low 
rates that the managers have difficulty in making both 
ends meet, and as to the scenery, supernumeraries and 
the mechanical department they manage as they best 
can ; for instance, at the Opera, the figurantes get from 
two hundred and fifty to three hundred francs for the 
season, which lasts two months and a half ; they pro- 
vide themselves with shoes and stockings, the rest 
being given to them ; most of them are grisettes. In 
addition to this the figurants and figurantes are rather 
unmanageable. If a fine is imposed on them for being 
late or for any other cause they leave the manager in 
the lurch. Their service in the theatre is simply so 
much extra ; they obtain a living elsewhere ; this or 
that journeyman mason, a druid or musketeer in the 
evening, comes to the rehearsal in his working panta- 
loons, his knees still plastered with lime. A large cap- 
ital, and lavish expenditure of money are necessary to 
lubricate the wheels of a modern theatre : they occa- 
sionally creak and get out of order, as is sometimes 
seen at the performances. Centralization and a com- 



LITEEATURE. 77 

plete national life are likewise necessary in order to 
supply dramatic ideas ; here tliey translate our pieces. 
I have just heard " Faust," the prima-donna of which 
is a French lady. At the Nicolini theatre the " Mont- 
joie" of Octave Feuillet is performed, and, to make it 
more intelligible, it is entitled Montjoie o V Egoista. On 
another day we have Geloisa, which is " Othello " ar- 
ranged as a domestic melodrama ; — it is impossible to 
remain, — I leave at the third act. A few novels are 
produced like Un j^'^^ode d' Italia and Pasquale Paoli, 
great historical machines in the style of Walter Scott, 
written in declamatory language and with frequent al- 
lusions to the present time. One of my friends, a cul- 
tivated person, admits that the literature of the day in 
Italy is bad ; politics absorb all the sap of the tree, 
other branches proving barren. In a historical line 
there are only monographs. Writers resemble provin- 
cialists thirty years behind the capital on account of 
their remoteness from it ; a good deal of time is requi- 
site to acclimate a clear concise style, based on facts 
and free of exaggerations. They have not even a fixed 
language ; all the Italians born outside of Tuscany 
are obliged, like Alfieri, to resort to it in order to 
purify their dialect. Besides this, Tuscans and Italians, 
are all expected to avoid French turns of expression, 
so contrary to the genius of their language, to painfully 
unlearn them, and purge their memories of them. 
Now, as France, for a hundred and fifty years, has 
furnished Italy with books and ideas you may judge of 
the difficulty of doing so. In this particular, many 
writers fall into classic pedantry and superstitions ; 
they nourish themselves on the standard authors of the 
sixteenth century, and, as purists, go farther back, to 
the fourteenth ; — but how express modern ideas in the 
language of Froissart, or even in that of Amyot ? 
Hence they are constrained to interlard their antique 
style with contemporary terms ; these incongruities 



78 FLORENCE. 

torment them ; they can only walk with shackled feet, 
embarrassed by souvenirs of authorized forms and of a 
precise vocabulary. A writer confessed to me that this 
obligation put his mind to the rack. This abortive re- 
sult is, again, an effect of the past ; its causes are at 
once perceptible, namely, on the one hand, the inter- 
ruption of hterary traditions after the seventeenth 
century, in the universal decadence of studies and of 
intellects, and, on the other, the want of centralization 
and a capital essential for the suppression of dialects. 
The history of all Italy is derived from one circum- 
stance : she could not unite under a moderate or semi- 
enlightened monarchy in the sixteenth century at the 
same time as her neighbors. 

To make amends politics are now in full blast ; one 
might compare it to a field suffering with a long 
drought, reinvigorated by a sudden shower. You see 
nothing but political caricatures of Victor Emmanuel, 
Napoleon and the Pope. They are coarse in concep- 
tion and in execution : the Pope is a skeleton or a rope- 
dancer; death, playing at bowls, is knocking him 
and the cardinals down. They are without wit or 
finesse ; the aim is to express the idea forcibly, and to 
make a sensational impression. In Hke manner their 
journals, almost all penny-papers, talk loud and high 
rather than justly. They seem like people who, after 
a certain time, are released from their fetters and ges- 
ticulate vigorously and strike out in the air to stretch 
their limbs. Some, meanwhile, la Pace, and the Milan 
Gazette, reason closely, appreciate differences, refuse to 
be considered for De Maistre or for Voltaire, laud 
Paolo Sarpi, Gioberti and Eosmini, and strive to re- 
vive their Italian traditions. People so spiritual and 
so nobly endowed will finally hit upon some moderate 
tone and a medium course of things. In the mean time 
they are proud of their free press and ridicule ours. 
To tell the truth we, on this point, make a sad figure 



THE FRENCH PEESS. 79 

abroad ; after reading in a cafe the " Times," " Gali- 
gnani," the " Koelnische or " Allgemeine Zeitung," 
and a French paper is taken up, one's pride suffers. 
A cautious or commonplace pohtical paragraph, a 
vague or too comph\cent editorial, scanty correspond- 
ence alwa^'s got up, very little precise information and 
sound discussion, a good many phrases of which some 
are well written, such is the substance of a French 
newspaper ; and this is poor, not merely because the 
government interferes, but again and especially, be- 
cause intelligent readers capable of serious attention 
are too few in number. The public does not insist on 
being furnished with facts and with proofs ; it requu'es 
to be amused, or to have a ready-made idea clearly 
resifted. A few cultivated minds at the most, a 
Parisian coterie with small provincial branches, detects 
here and there an allusion, a bit of irony or of malice, 
at which it laughs and is satisfied. If our journals are 
politically defective it is because the whole country is 
defective in political aptitude and instruction. Here, 
it is asserted, the ItaHans have naturally an instinct 
and talent for pohtical affairs ; — in any event they are 
passionately fond of them. 

Many persons in a good position to observe, often 
tell me that if France posts its sentinels ten years 
longer on the Alps in order to prevent an Austrian in- 
vasion the hberal party will have doubled : the schools, 
the journals and the army, every accumulation of pros- 
perity and of intelligence contributes to increase it. 
Provincial or municipal jealousies are no obstacle 
whatever. In the begmning there was some disaffec- 
tion apparent in Tuscany, and some resistance ; this 
section of the country was the most contented and the 
best governed in Italy ; there was some hesitation in 
submitting to Turin, and in taking risks; but the 
Marquis Gino Capponi, the man the most respected in 
the Tuscan party, declared in favor of the union as 



80 



FLOKENCE. 



there was no other means for maintaining an existence 
in modern Europe. All the great Italians, moreover, 
since Machiaveili and Dante have urged in their 
writings the importance of being able to resist Austria. 
To-day all are united and fused together ; we already 
see in the army a kind of common language which is 
a compromise between the various dialects. 

Two traits distinguish this revolution from ours. In 
the first place the Italians are neither levellers nor so- 
cialists. The noble is on a familiar footing with the 
peasant, he converses with the people in a friendly 
manner ; the latter, far from being hostile to their 
nobility, are rather proud of it. AU property is subject 
to the metayer system,^ and the division of products 
establishes a sort of companionship between the owner 
and the farmer. This farmer is often on the podere 
(manor) two hundred years, from father to son, and 
consequently is a conservative adverse to innovations, 
and inaccessible to theories ; the system of cultivation 
is the same as under the Medicis which was much ad- 
vanced for those times, but far behind for these. The 
proprietor comes in October to superintend his harvest 
and then departs ; — not that he is a " gentleman 
farmer," for he has an agent, and often possesses seven 
or eight villas, in one of which he resides ; with no 
moral or political authority over the peasantry as in 
England he yet lives on good terms with theni. He is 
not scornful, insolent or a " citadin," like our ancient 
nobles ; he loves economy and, formerly, sold his own 
wine. For this purpose every palace had an opening 
through which customers passed their empty bottles 
and received them full on paying the money ; sup- 
pressed vanity leaves to human benevolence a much 
larger field of action. The master " lives and lets live." 

* An equal or relative division of products of land between the 
cultivator and the proprietor. 



ITALIAN TRAITS. 81 

There is no pulling and hauling ; the meshes of the 
social web are relaxed and they do not break. Hence 
the ability of the country to govern itself since 1859. 
In this respect it is more fortunate than we are. It is 
a great feature in the organization of a government or 
of a nation not to feel your feet resting on commu- 
nistic instincts and theories. 

In the second place they are not Voltairians. Beren- 
ger's commercial traveller, philosopher and student is 
not with them a frequent or popular character."'^ They 
do not approve of the violent language of the "Diritto." 
They are too imaginative, too poetic, and besides that, 
are endowed with too much good sense ; thej are too 
conscious of social necessities, too remote from our 
logical abstractions to desire to suppress religion as we 
did in 1792. They are educated to see processions, 
sacred paintings and pompous or noble churches ; their 
Catholicism forms a part of the habits of their eyes, 
their ears, thei^ imagination and their taste ; they need 
it as they need their beautiful climate. Never will an 
Italian sacrifice all this, like a Frenchman, to an ab- 
straction of the reasoning brain ; his way of conceiving 
things is quite otherwise, much less absolute, much 
more complex, much less adapted to sudden demoli- 
tions, much better accommodated to the world as it is. 
And still another substantial support is this, they build 
on a religion and a society that are intact, and are not 
obhged, like our politicians, to guard against grand 
convulsions. 

Other circumstances or traits of character are less 
favorable. There is a greater lack of energy in Tuscany 
than elsewhere. In 1859 the country furnished twelve 
thousand men against the Austrians, — six thousand be- 
longing to the old army, and six thousand volunteers, — 
and many came back. They boast of a few heroes, 

* See the apothecary Homais in " Madame Bovary" by G. Fhmbcrt. 

4^- 



82 FLORENCE, 

individuals like M. Montanelli, always in quest of 
bullets ; but as to the masses discipline annoys them ; 
the strictness of military life takes them by surprise ; 
they miss their cup of coffee in the morning. In 
Florence, society for the past three hundred years has 
been epicurean ; nobody feels uneasy on account of his 
children, his relatives or anybody els-e ; people love to 
gossip and lounge about ; they are spirituel and ego- 
tistical. On getting a small income a man wraps him- 
self up in his cloak and goes to a cafe to chat away the 
time. On the other hand the tyranny of habit and of 
the imagination is an obstacle to the formation of any 
definite religious opinions. They do not see clearly 
into the catholic question. No one conceives before- 
hand a positive personal symbol as in France in the 
eighteenth century, or as in Germany in the time of 
Luther ; reason and conscience do not speak loud 
enough. They say vaguely that Catholicism should ac- 
commodate itself to modern necessities, but without 
precisely defining the concessions it ought to make or 
be forced to make ; they do not know what might be 
exacted or abandoned. They committed a grave mis- 
take in 1859 in not instituting the civil marriage, and 
in not returning to the Leopoldian laws. The Pope, 
by his perseverance, had undermined or transformed 
them ; he could not endure by his side a true laic gov- 
ernment. Now, with such an adversary confronting 
them, it is important to decide, apart from one's self 
and in advance, what one will yield if necessary and 
what will be insisted on at all hazards ; for his imper- 
ceptible encroachments are tenacious hke those of the 
ivy, and irresolution is always mastered by obstinacy. 
Add to this that a notable part of the clergy, most of 
the prelates, are for him ; one of these, the cardinal of 
Pisa, possesses all the rigidity of the middle ages and 
is jpapaMle. — The Italians to sum up, are in a strait. 
They would like to remain good catholics, keep the 



ITALIAN TRAITS. 83 

capital of the christian world amongst them, and yet 
reduce the Pope to the position of the Grand Llama 
without being able to see that, once despoiled, he be- 
comes forever inimical ; it is like " wedding the Grand 
Turk to the republic of Venice." These are their two 
weak points, a lack of the military spirit and irresolu- 
tion in religious matters. Things must be left to time 
and to necessity, which may strengthen one and define 
the other. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE PIAZZA.— EEPUBLICAN SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.— STEEET 
FEAYS AXD FA3IILY FEUDS.— THE PALAZZO-VECCHIO.— CONTRAST 
BETWEEN MEDLEVAL AND RENAISSANCE MONUMENTS.— THE 
DUOMO.— MIXED AND ORIGINAL CHARACTER OF THE ARCHITEC- 
TURE.— THE CA]iIPANILE. — THE BAPTISTERY.— ITALY REMAINS 
LATIN.— PRECOCITY OF THE RENAISSANCE.— BRUNELLES CHI, DON- 
ATELLO AND GHLBERTI. 

In a city like this one wanders about for the first few 
days without any plan. How can you expect one in 
this medley of works and of ages to attain at once to a 
definite idea ? It is necessary to turn over the leaves 
before reading. 

Our first visit is to the Piazza della Signoria ; here, 
as at Sienna, was the centre of republican life ; here as 
at Sienna, the old town hall, the Palazzo-Yecchio, is a 
mediseval structure, an enormous block of stone pierced 
with occasional trefoil windows, with a heavy cornice 
of projecting battlements and flanked with a similar 
high tower, a veritable domestic citadel calculated for 
strife and a beacon, on the defensive near by and 
visible afar off, a perfect panoply crowned with a 
visible crest. It is impossible to look at it without 
being reminded of the intestine wars described by 
Dino CamxDagni. Times in Italy were rude during the 
middle ages ; we only had a war of castles, they had 
the warfare of the streets. For thirty-three successive 
years, in the thirteenth century, the Buondelmonti on 
the one side with forty-two families, and the Uberti, 
on the other, with twenty-two families, fought without 
ceasing. They barricaded streets with chevaux-de- 
frises and fortified the houses ; the nobles filled the 
city with their armed peasants fi'om the country. 



CIVIC STRIFES. 85 

Finally, tliirtj-six palaces, belonging to the vanquished 
were demolished ; and if the town-hall has an irregular 
shape, it is owing to the furious vengeance which 
compelled the architect to leave vacant the detested 
sites on which the destroyed houses stood. What 
would Ave say in these days if a battle in our streets, 
like that of June, lasted, not merely three days but 
thirty years ; if irrevocable banishments deprived the 
nation of a quarter of its population ; if the com- 
munity of exiles, in league with strangers, roamed 
around our frontier awaiting the chances of a plot, or of 
a surprise, to force our walls and proscribe their per- 
secutors in turn ; if enmities and fresh strife intervened 
to irritate the conquerors after a victory ; if the cit}", 
already devastated, was forced to constantly add to its 
devastations ; if sudden popular tumults arose to com- 
phcate the internecine struggles of the nobles ; if, every 
month, an insurrection caused the shops to be closed ; 
if, every evening, a man on leaving his house, dreaded 
an enemy in ambush at the nearest corner ? " Many 
of the citizens," says Dino Campagni, " having as- 
sembled one day on the square of the Frescobaldi, in 
order to bury a deceased woman, and, as was customary 
on such occasions, the citizens sitting below on rush 
mats and the cavaliers and doctors above on the 
benches, the Donati and the Cerchi sitting below 
facing each other, one of these, in order to arrange his 
mantle, or for some other reason, arose to his feet. 
His adversaries, suspecting something, sprang up also 
and drew their swords. The others did likewise, and 
they came to blows." Such a circumstance shows how 
high strung spirits were ; burnished swords, ever ready, 
leaped of themselves out of their scabbards. On leaving 
the table, heated with wine and words, their hands 
itched. " A party of young men in the habit of galloping 
together, being at supper one evening in the kalends of 
May, became so excited that they resolved to engage 



86 



FLOEENCE. 



the troop of the Cerchi, and employ their hands and 
arms against them. On this evening, which is the 
advent of Spring, the women assemble at the halls in 
their neighborhood to dance.^ The young men of the 
Cerchi encountered accordingly, the troop of the 
Donati, which attacked them with drawn swords. And 
in this encounter, Eicoverino of the Cerchi, had his 
nose cut by a man in the pay of the Donati, which 

person it was said was Piero Spini ; but the 

Cerchi never disclosed his name, intending thus to 
obtain greater vengeance^ This expression, almost 
removed from our minds, is the key of Itahan history ; 
the vendetta, in Corsican fashion, is a naturalized, per- 
manent thing between man and man, family and family, 
party and party, and generation and generation. " A 
worthy young man named Guido, son of Messire 
Cavalcante Cavalcanti, and a noble cavalier, courteous 
and brave but proud, reserved and fond of study, at 
enmity with Messire Corro, had frequently resolved to 
encounter him. Messire Corro feared him greatly be- 
cause he knew him to be of great courage, and sought 
to assassinate Guido while he was upon a pilgrimage 

to St. James, which attempt failed Guido, 

thereupon, on returning to Florence, stirred up some 
of the young men against him, who promised him 
their aid. And one day being on horseback with some 
of the followers of the house of Cerchi and with a 
javelin in his hand, he spurred his horse against 
Messire Corro, thinking that he was supported by his 
party, and, passing him, he threw his javelin at him 
without hitting him. There was with Messire Corro 
Simon, his son, a brave and bold young man, and 
Cecchino dei Bardi, and likewise many others with 
swords who started in pursuit of him, but not overtak- 



* See tlie first act of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare has im- 
iginecl and portrayed these customs with admirable fidelity. 



THE LOGGIA. 87 

ing liim, tliey laiinclied stones after him and also flung 
them out of the windows on him so that he was 
wounded in the hand." In order to find similar 
practices at the present day we have to go to the 
placers of San Francisco, where, at the first provoca- 
tion, in public and at balls or in a cafe, the revolver 
speaks, supplying the place of policemen and dis- 
pensing with the formalities of a duel. Lynch law, 
frequently applied, is alone qualified to pacify such 
temperaments. It was applied now and then in 
Florence, but too rarely, and in an irregular manner, 
which is the reason why the custom of looking out 
for one's self, of ready blows and honored and honorable 
assassination prevailed there up to the end of and 
beyond the middle ages. To make amends this 
custom of keeping the mind alwaj^s on the stretch, of 
constantly occupying it with painful and tragic senti- 
ments, rendered it so much the more sensitive to the 
arts Avhose beauty and serenity afforded such contrasts. 
This deep feudal stratum, so ploughed and broken up, 
was essential in order to provide aliment and a soil for 
the vivacious roots of the renaissance. 

The little book in which these stories are narrated is 
by Dino Campagni, a contemporary of Dante ; it is 
about the size of the hand, costs two francs and can be 
carried about with one in the pocket. Between two 
monuments, in a cafe, under a loggia one reads a few 
passages — an affray, a council, a sedition — and the 
mute stones speak. 

But when the eye passes from the Palazzo-Vecchio 
and turns to neighboring monuments there appears on 
all sides a joyous aspect and a love of beauty. The 
Loggia de'Lanzi on the right presents antique statues, 
bold, original figures of the sixteenth century — a 
" Eape of the Sabines" by John of Bologna, a 
" Judith" by Donatello, and the " Perseus" of Cellini. 
The latter is a Grecian ephebos, a sort of nude Mercury 



»» FLORENCE. 

of great simplicity of expression. The renaissance 
statuary certainly revives or continues the antique 
statuary, not the earliest, that of Phidias, who is calm 
and wholly divine, but the later, that of Lysippus who 
aims at the human. This Perseus is brother to the 
Discobulus and has had his actual anatomical model : 
his knees are a little heavy, and the veins of the arms 
are too prominent ; the blood spouting from Medusa's 
neck forms a gross, full jet, the exact imitation of a 
decapitation. But what wonderful fidelity to nature ! 
The woman is really dead ; her hmbs and joints have 
suddenly become relaxed ; the arm hangs languidly, 
the body is contorted and the leg drawn up in agony. 
Underneath, on the pedestal, amidst garlands of 
flowers and goats' heads, in shell-shaped niches of the 
purest and most elegant taste, stand four exquisite 
bronze statuettes with all the living nudity of the 
antique. 

I try to translate to myself this term living, ^vhich I 
find constantly on my lips, on contemplating renais- 
sance figures. It just came into my mind on looking at 
the fountain of Ammanati fi^om the other side of the 
palace, consisting of nude Tritons and graceful Nereids, 
with heads too small, and gTand elongated forms in 
action, like the figTires of Eosso and Primaticcio. Art, 
of course, degenerates and becomes mannered, exag- 
geratmg the prancing and the display of the hmbs, and 
altering proportions in order to render the body more 
spirited and elegant. And yet these figures belong to 
the same family as the others, and are living, like them ; 
that is to say they freely and unconsciously enjoy 
physical existence, content in spreading out and in 
lifting up their legs, in falling backward and in a parade 
of themselves hke splendid animals. The bestial 
Tritons are thoroughly jovial ; there could not be more 
honest nudity and greater effrontery without baseness. 
They rear up, clutch each other, and force out their 



THE DUOMO. 89 

muscles ; you feel that tliis satisfies tliem, that that fine 
young fellow is content to take a spirited attitude and 
to hold a cornucopia ; that this nymph, undraped and 
passive, does not transcend in thought her condition of 
superb animality. There are no metaphysical sj^mbols 
here, no pensive expressions. The sculptor suffers his 
heads to retain the simple, calm physiognomies of a 
primitive organization ; the body and its pose are 
everything to him. He keeps within the limits of his 
art ; its domain consists of the members of the body, 
and he cannot after all do more than accentuate torsos, 
thighs and necks ; through this involuntary harmony 
of his thought and of his resources he animates his 
bronze and, for lack of this harmony, we no longer 
know how to do as much. 

Desirous of seeing the beginnings of this renaissance 
we go from the Palazzo-Yecchio to the Duomo. Both 
form the double heart of Florence, such as it beat in 
the middle ages, the former for politics, and the latter 
for religion, and the two so well united that they 
formed but one. Nothing can be nobler than the 
public edict passed in 1294 for the construction of the 
national cathedral. "Whereas, it being of sovereign 
prudence on the part of a people of high origin to 
proceed in its affairs in such a manner that the wisdom 
no less than the magnanimity of its proceedings be rec- 
ognized in its outward works, it is ordered that Arnolfo 
master architect of our commune, prepare models or 
designs for the restoration of Santa Maria Eeparata, 
with the most exalted and most prodigal magnificence, 
in order that the industry and power of men may 
never create or undertake anything whatsoever more vast 
and more beautiful ; in accordance with tliat which 
our wisest citizens have declared and counselled in 
public session and in secret conclave, to wit, that no 
hand be laid upon the Avorks of the commune without 
the intent of making them to correspond to the noble 



90 FLORENCE. 

soul wliich is composed of the souls of all its citizens 
united in one will." In this ample period breathes the 
grandiose pride and intense patriotism of the ancient 
republics. Athens'under Pericles, and Eome under the 
first Scipio cherished no prouder sentiments. At each 
step, here as elsewhere, in texts and in monuments, is 
found, in Italy, the traces, the renewal and the spirit of 
classic antiquity. 

Let us, accordingly, look at the celebrated Duomo, — 
but the diflS.culty is to see it. It stands upon flat 
ground, and, in order that the eye might embrace its 
mass it would be necessary to level three hundred 
buildings. Herein appears the defect of the great 
mediseyal structure ; even to-day, after so many open- 
ings effected by modern demolish ers, most of the 
cathedrals are visible only on paper. The spectator 
catches sight of a fragment, some section of a wall, or 
the facade ; but the whole escapes him ; man's work is 
no longer proportioned to his organs. It was not thus 
in antiquity ; temples were small or of mediocre dimen- 
sions, and were almost always erected on an eminence ; 
their general form and complete profile could be enjoyed 
from twenty different points of view. After the advent 
of Christianity men's conceptions transcended their 
forces, and the ambition of the spirit no longer took 
into account the limitations of the body. The human 
machine lost its equilibrium ; with forgetfulness of the 
moderate there was established a love of the odd. 
Without either reason or symmetry campaniles or bell- 
towers were planted, like isolated posts, in front or 
alongside of cathedrals ; there is one of these alongside 
of the Duomo, and this change of human equipoise must 
have been potent, since even here, among so many 
latin traditions and classic aptitudes, it declares itself. 

In other respects, save the ogive arcades, the monu- 
ment is not gothic but byzantine, or, rather, original ; 
it is a creature of a new and mixed form like the new 



THE DUOMO. 91 

and mixed civilization of wliich it is tlie offspring. 
You feel power and invention in it with a touch of 
quaintness and fancy. Walls of enormous grandeur 
are developed or expanded without the few windows in 
them happening to impair their massiveness or dimin- 
ish their strength. There are no flying buttresses ; 
they are self-sustaining. Marble panels, alternately 
yellow and black, cover them with a glittering mar- 
quetry, and curves of arches let into their masses seem 
to be the bones of a robust skeleton beneath the skin. 
The Latin cross, which the edifice figures, contracts at 
the top, and the chancel and transepts bubble out into 
rotundities and projections, in petty domes behind the 
church in order to accompany the grand dome which 
ascends above the choir, and which, the work of Bru- 
nelleschi, newer and yet more antique than that of St. 
Peter, lifts in the air to an astonishing height its elon- 
gated form, its octagonal sides and its pointed lantern. 
But how can a physiognomy of a church be conveyed 
by words ? It has one nevertheless ; all its portions 
aiDpearing together are combined in one chord and in 
one effect. If you examine the plans and old engrav- 
ings you will appreciate the bizarre and captivating 
harmony of these grand Koman walls overlaid with 
oriental fancies ; of these gothic ogives arranged in 
byzantine cupolas ; of these light Italian columns 
forming a circle above a bordering of Grecian caissons ; 
of this assemblage of aU forms, pointed, swelling, 
angular, oblong, circular and octagonal. Greek and 
Latin antiquity, the Byzantine and Saracenic orient, 
the Germanic and Italian middle-age, the entire past, 
shattered, amalgamated and transformed, seems to 
have been melted over anew in the human furnace in 
order to flow out in fresh forms in the hands of the 
new genius of Giotto, Arnolfo, Brunelleschi and 
Dante. 

Here the work is unfinished, and the success is not 



93 FLOKENCE. 

complete. The facade has not been constructed : all 
that we see of it is a great naked, scarified wall similar 
to a leper's plaster. There is no light within : a line 
of small round bays and a few windows fill the immen- 
sity of the edifice with a gray illumination : it is bare, 
and the argillaceous tone in which it is painted depresses 
the eye with its wan monotony. A " Pieta" by Michael 
Angelo and a few statues seem like spectres ; the bas- 
reliefs are only vague confusion. The architect, hesi- 
tating between mediaeval and antique taste, fell only 
upon a lifeless light, that between a pure light and a 
colored light. 

The more we contemplate architectural works the 
more do we find them adapted to express the prevail- 
ing spirit of an epoch. Here, on the fiank of the 
Duomo, stands the Campanile by Giotto, erect, isolated, 
like St. Michael's tower at Bordeaux, or the tower of 
St. Jacques at Paris ; the mediaeval man, in fact, loves 
to build high ; he aspires to heaven, his elevations all 
tapering off into pointed pinnacles ; if this one had 
been finished a spire of thirty feet would have sur- 
mounted the tower, itself two hundred and fifty feet 
high. Hitherto the northern architect and the Italian 
architect are governed by the same instinct, and gratify 
the same penchant ; but whilst the northern artist, 
frankly gothic, embroiders his tower with delicate 
mouldings and complex flower-work, and a stone lace- 
work infinitely multiplied and intersected, the southern 
artist, half-latin through his tendencies and his reminis- 
cences, erects a square, strong and full pile, in which a 
skilful ornamentation does not efface the general 
structure, which is not a frail sculptured bijou but a 
solid durable monument, its coating of red, black and 
white marble covering it with royal luxuriance, and 
which, through its healthy and animated statues, its 
bas-reliefs framed in medallions, recalls the friezes 
and pediments of an antique temple. In these medal- 



THE BAPTISTERY. 93 

lions Giotto lias sj^mbolizecl the principal epochs of 
human civilization ; the traditions of Greece near 
those of Judea, Adam, Tubal-Cain and Noah, Daedalus, 
Hercules and Antaeus, the invention of ploughing, the 
mastery of the horse, and the discovery of the arts and 
the sciences ; laic and philosophic sentiment live freely 
in him side by side with a theological and religious 
sentiment. Do we not already see in this renaissance of 
the fourteenth century that of the sixteenth ? In order 
to pass from one to the other, it will suffice for the spirit 
of the first to become ascendant over the spirit of the 
second ; at the end of a century we are to see in the 
adornment of the edifice, in these statues by Donatello, 
in their baldness so expressive, in the sentiment of the 
real and natural life displayed among the goldsmiths 
and sculptors, evidence of the transformation begun 
under Giotto having been already accomplished. 

Every step we take we encounter some sign of this 
persistency or precocity of a latin and classic spirit. 
Facing the Duomo is the Baptistery, which at first 
served as a church, a sort of octagonal temple sur- 
mounted by a cupola, built, doubtless, after the model 
of the Pantheon of Rome, and which, according to the 
testimony of a contemporary bishop, already in the 
eighth century projected upward the pompous rotun- 
dities of its imperial forms. Here, then, in the 
most barbarous epoch of the middle ages, is a prolon- 
gation, a renewal, or, at least, an imitation of Roman 
architecture. You enter, and find that the decoration 
is not all gothic : a circle of corinthian columns of 
precious marbles with, above these, a circle of smaller 
columns surmounted by loftier arcades, and, on the 
vault, a legion of saints and angels peopling the entire 
space, gathering in four rows around a grand, dull, mea- 
gre, melancholy, Byzantine Christ. On these three super- 
posed stories the three gradual distortions of antique 
art appear ; but, distorted or intact, it is always an- 



94 



FLOKENCE. 



tique art. A significant feature, this, tlirougliout the 
history of Italy : she did not become germanic. In 
the tenth century the degraded Eonian still subsisted 
distinct and intact side by side with the proud Bar- 
barian, and Bishop Luitpi|^nd: wrote : " We Lombards, 
as well as the Saxons, Franks, Lorraniaks, Bavarians, 
Suabians and Burgundians, so utterly despise the 
Eoman name that, when in choler, we know not how 
to insult our enemies more grievously than to call them 
Eomans, for, in this name we include whatever is base, 
whatever is cowardly, whatever is perfidious, the ex- 
tremes of avarice and luxury, and every vice that can 
prostitute the dignity of human nature." ^"■ 

In the twelfth century the Germans under Frederick 
Barbarossa, counting upon finding in the Lombards 
men of the same race as themselves, were surprised to 
find them so latinized, "having discarded the asperi- 
ties of barbarian rudeness and imbibed from sun and 
atmosphere something of Boman finesse and gentle- 
^ ness, preserving the elegance of diction and the ur- 
banity of antique customs and imitating, even to their 
cities and the regulation of public affairs, the abihty of 
the ancient Bomans."t Down to the thirteenth cen- 
tury they continue to speak latin ; St. Anthony of 
Padua preached in latin ; the people jargbning in in- 
cipient Italian, always understand the literary language^ 
the same as a peasant of Berri or Burgundy whose 
rustic patois is no obstacle in the way of his com- 
prehending the purer discourse of his cure. The two 
great feudal creations, gothic architecture and chivalric 
poesy, appear among them only at a late hour, and 
through importation. Dante states that, even in 1313, 
no Italian had composed a chivalric poem ; those of 
France were translated, or were read in the Provencal 



* Quoted by Gibbon. f Otho of Freysingen. 

X Litteraliter and sapienter opposed to maternaliter. 



GHIBERTI. 95 

dialect. Tlie sole gothic monuments of Italy, Assisi 
and the Duomo of Milan, are constructed by foreign- 
ers. Fundamentally, and under external or temporary 
alterations, the local latin structure remains unchanged, 
and in the sixteenth century the christian and feudal 
envelope is to drop off of itself in order to allow the 
reappearance of that noble and sensuous paganism 
which had never been destroyed. 

There was no need of waiting until that time. Sculp- 
ture, which, once before under Nicholas of Pisa, 
had anticipated painting, again anticipated it in the 
fifteenth century ; these very doors of the Baptistery 
enable one to see with what sudden perfection and bril- 
liancy. Three men then appeared, Brunelleschi, the 
architect of the Duomo, Donatello, who decorated the 
Campanile with statues, and Ghiberti, who cast the 
two gates of the Baptistery,"^ all three friends and 
rivals, all three having commenced with the gold- 
smith's art and a study of the living model, and all 
three passionately devoted to the antique ; Brunel- 
leschi drawing and measuring Eoman monuments, 
Donatello at Eome copying statues and bas-reliefs and 
Ghiberti importing from Greece torsos, vases and heads 
which he restored, imitated and worshipped. " It is 
impossible," said he in speaking of an antique statue, 
" to express its perfection by words. ... It has in- 
finite suavities which the eye alone cannot detect ; only 
the touch of the hand discovers them !" And he alluded 
sorrowfully to the great persecutions through which 
under Constantine "the statues and paintings that 
breathe such nobleness and perfect dignity were over- 
thrown and broken in pieces, besides the severe penal- 
ties which threatened all who undertook to make new 
ones, which led to the extinction of art and of the doc- 
trines that appertain thereto." When one has such a 

* The first born in 1377, the second in 138G, and tlie third in 1387. 



96 FLORENCE. 

lively sentiment of classical perfection he is not far 
from attaining to it. Toward 1400, at the age of 
twenty-three, after a competition from which Brunel- 
leschi withdraws in 'his favor, he secures the commission 
for the execution of the two doors ; under his hands 
we see a revival of pure Greek beauty, and not merely 
a vigorous imitation of the actual body as Donatello 
comprehended it, but an appreciation of ideal and per- 
fect form. In his bas-rehefs there are numerous female 
figures which in the nobleness of their shape and of 
their head and in the calm simphcity and develop- 
ment of their attitude, seem to be Athenian master- 
pieces. They are not too elongated, as with Michael 
Angelo's successors, or too vigorous as Avith the three 
Graces of Raphael. His Eve, just born, bending for- 
ward and raising her large calm eyes to the Creator, is 
a primitive nymph, naive and pure, in whom appear 
balanced instincts in repose and in activity at the same 
momejit. The same dignity and harmony regulates 
the groupings and arranges the scenes. Processions 
defile and turn as around a vase ; individuals and 
crowds are mutually opposed and related as in an an- 
tique chorus ; the symmetrical forms of ancient archi- 
tecture dispose around colonnades the grave, manly 
figures, the falling draperies, the varied, appropriate 
and moderate attitudes of the beautiful tragedy 
enacted beneath its porticoes. One of the youthful 
soldiers seems to be an Alcibiades ; before him marches 
a Eoman consul ; blooming young women of incom- 
parable freshness and vigor turn half-round, gazing 
and extending an arm, one of them Hke a Juno and an- 
other an amazon, all arrested at one of those rare mo- 
ments when the nobleness of physical life attains to its 
plenitude and perfection without an effort and without 
reflection. When passion excites the muscles and dis- 
turbs countenances it is without deforming or dis- 
torting them ; the Florentine sculptor as formerly the 



GHIBERTI. 97 

Grecian poet, does not allow it to pursue its course 
to the end ; lie subjects it to the law of proportion and 
subordinates expression to beauty. He does not wish 
the spectator to be disturbed by a display of crude 
violence, nor borne away by the thrilling vivacity of 
impetuous action suddenly arrested. For him art is a 
harmony which purifies emotion in order to render 
the spirit healthy. No man, save Eaphael, has more 
happily found that unique moment of natural, choice 
inventiveness, the precious moment when a work of art 
anintentionally becomes a moral work. The " School 
of Athens" and the Loggia of the Yatican seem to be of 
the same school as the doors of the Baptistery, and, to 
complete the resemblance, Ghiberti handles bronze as 
if he were a painter; in abundance of figures, in the 
interest of the scenes, in the grandeur of the land- 
scapes, in the use of perspective, and in the variety and 
relationship of the several planes which recede and 
sink down, his sculptures are almost pictures. — But the 
north wind blows amongst the masses of stones as 
through a mountain defile, and when one has wielded 
an opera-glass for half an hour in it he turns away, 
even from Ghiberti himself, for a cup of poor coffee in 
a miserable auberge. 



BOOK in. 



THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. 



CHAPTEE I. 

THE EAELY PAINTEES.— THE BYZANTINES.— CIMABUE.— GIOTTO.— 
FIKST EVIDENCES OF THE LAIC, ITALIAN AND PAGAN SPIEIT.— 
THE SUCCESSOKS OF GIOTTO.— AET AT THIS EPOCH EEPRE- 
SENTED IDEAS AND NOT OBJECTS. 

April 12. — Here are five or six days passed in tlie 
Academy of the Fine Arts, at the Uffizj, in the convent 
of St. Mark, at Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella and 
in the church of the Carmine, Yasari in hand. One 
may here note every step of Painting ; and it is impor- 
tant to note them for, otherwise, in this semi-barbarous 
age, it has little interest. 

From what low depths has it not arisen ! At the 
Academy a St. Mary Magdalen, painted by some By- 
zantine artist, has shapeless feet, wooden hands, pro- 
jecting ears, and the figure and the pose of a mummy ; 
her tresses, which fall to her feet, form a hairy robe, 
appearing at the first glance like that of a bear. The 
most ancient picture in the Uffizj is a Madonna by Eico 
of Candia, a figure apparently of gingerbread. These 
are sign-painters, copyists by the yard, and their sim- 
plicity is grotesque. 

The distance between the mechanic and the artist is 
infinite, like that between night and day ; but between 
night and day comes the paleness of dawn, and how- 
ever dim the dawn it is nevertheless daylight. Thus is 
it with Cimabue, who already belongs to the new 
order of things, for he invents and expresses ; his 



CIMABUE. 99 

Madonna at tlie Academy, as yet somewhat lifeless, is 
not deficient in a certain grave benignity ; two angels 
below her stand in an attitude of monrnful grace and 
meekness. Of the four old men at the bottom of the 
picture, two have no necks ; but you recognize in them 
a certain aspect of seriousness and of grandeur, one of 
them appearing to be attentive and surprised. An 
expression, even when a feeble one, is it not a miracu- 
lous thing, like the first confused stammerings of a 
mute on suddenly recovering his speech? We can 
understand how the Madonna of Santa Maria Novella, 
whose hands are so meagre and who seems so doleful 
to us, excited " the wonder of all to such a degree that 
they brought the King of Anjou to the studio, and all 
the men and women of Florence gathered there in 
grand festivity with a great concourse of people, and 
the picture was transported from Cimabue's house to 
the church with great pomp, and with trumpets and in 
solemn procession." On whatever side we study his 
works we find that he anticipates all subsequent inno- 
vations. He executed, says Yasari, a St. Francis after 
nature which was a new thing, and opposed to the sys- 
tem of the Greeks his masters,"^ w^ho only painted 
according to tradition. To return to the living figure, 
to discover that in order to imitate the human form it 
is necessary to contemplate the human form, what 
could be simpler ? And yet therein lies the gist of all 
art. This is perceptible in the Uffizj gallery, in a small 
picture representing St. Catherine in her cauldron. 
The muscles of the torso are indicated and the bosom 
is quite made out; the three women in long green 
robes are nobly posed. You remember the grave 
Madonna in the Louvre, and the grandeur, and spirited 
action of the angels that surround her. "Cimabue," 



* This refers to Byzantine painters wlio were the conventional 
artists of the day. 



100 THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. 

says a commentator on Dante, *' was more noble than 
can be told, and, withal, so proud and disdainful, that 
if any one detected, or he discovered, a defect in any 
of his works, he immediately abandoned it however 
great its value." We find some traces of this proud 
spirit in the haughty and calm attitudes of some of 
his figures. A soul with a life of its own, a distinct 
and characteristic personality disclosing itself even in a 
vague mist, what a novelty ! All art, its principle, its 
dignity, its recompense, is therein manifested — to reveal 
and to perpetuate a personahty, that of the artist, and 
of this personality whatever is essential. In every 
degree, and in every domain, his business is to say to 
men, " Behold that which is in me and what I am ; it 
is for you to contemplate, to appreciate and to appro- 
priate whatever seems to you good !" 

The second step, that taken by Giotto, is much 
greater, and, with due proportion, equal to that which 
separates Eaphael from Perugino, or da Vinci from Ye- 
rocchio. Alongside of him, Margheritone, maintaining 
traditionary practices, designedly executed ugly and 
sometimes hideous figures ; Giotto attained to the 
beautiful through the lively, spontaneous invention of 
a complete, happy and even gay genius of the Italian 
order. Although born in a mystic century he is not 
himself mystic, and if he was the friend of Dante he 
did not resemble him. His, above all, was a varied, 
fertile, facile and richly creative nature ; at Florence, 
Assisi, Padua, Kome, Ferrara, Eimini and Avignon 
are entire chapels and churches, painted by his hand. 
" He labored at so many works that if one were to re- 
count them all no person would credit it." These 
fecund and facile genuises are inclined to joyousness 
and are disposed to take life easily. " He was very in- 
genious," says Vasari, " and very agreeable in con- 
versation and highly skilled in sayings of wit, the 
meaning of which is still preserved in this city." 



GIOTTO. 101 

Those reported of liim are coarse and obscene, wit, in 
those days conforming to the manners and customs 
which were those of peasants. Some are even toler- 
ably religious ; on explaining why, in pictures, St. 
Joseph has a melancholy air, he might be taken for a 
contemporary of Pulci. We discover in him the 
laic spirit, sententious and even positive, satiric and 
inimical to asceticism and h^^pocrisy. He who painted 
" The Marriage of St. Francis with Poverty" ridicules 
and openly rebukes the vaingloriousness and rapacity 
of the monks. "For the poverty which seems de- 
liberate and chosen," says he in his little poem, " ex- 
perience plainly shows that it is practised or not ac- 
cording to what is in the pocket. And if it is practised 
it is not to render it laudable, for there is no discern- 
ment of the mind in it, nor knowledge, nor courtesy, 
nor virtue. Certainly it seems to me a great shame, to 
call that virtue which suppresses good ; and it is evil- 
doing to prefer a beastly thing to the virtues, which 
bring salvation to all wise understandings, and which 
are such that the more they are prized the more de- 
lectable they are." Here is laic virtue, moral dignity, 
and the superior culture of the intellect openly pre- 
ferred to monkish rigors and christian mortifications. 
Giotto, indeed, is already a thinker among other 
thinkers, side by side with Guido Cavalcanti and his 
father, who are reported as epicureans and fortified 
with arguments against the existence of God, and 
Cecco d'Ascoli and many others. " Giotto," said his 
friends, " is a great master in the art of painting ; he 
is something more — he is master of seven liberal arts." 
Accordingly we have only to look at the figures of this 
Campanile to see that he is thoroughly imbued with 
philosophy ; that he formed for himself an idea of 
universal human civilization ; that, in his view, Chris- 
tianity was only a part of it ; that Chaldea, Greece and 
Bome could claim the half of it ; that inventors of 



102 THE FLOKENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. 

useful and beautiful arts hold the first rank in it ; that 
he considers the life, progress and happiness of man in 
the broad and liberal spirit of the Renaissance and of 
modern times ; and that a free, ample and complete 
expansion of the natural faculties is the end to which 
the rest must be subordinated. As he thought so did 
he act. " He was yerj studious," says Yasari, " and 
always wandered about contemplating new objects 
and inquiring of nature, so that he merited to be called 

the disciple of nature and of no other He painted 

divers landscapes full of trees and rocks, which was a 
novelty in his day." He did much more than this, and 
although his principal works are at Padua and at 
Assisi, it is easy to estimate here, by the small pictures 
in the Uffizj, in the Academy and in Santa Croce, 
the magnitude of the revolution he effected in his art. 
He seems to have discovered all, the ideal and nature, 
the nobleness of figures and the lively expression of 
sentiments. In his "Nativity," at the Academy, he 
has caught from the hfe the action of the kneeling 
shepherd, who, moved by profound respect, dares not 
approach nearer. In the picture of " Christ and St. 
Thomas" Jesus raises his arm with the most affection- 
ate and mournful air. In the " Last Supper" Judas, 
who is departing abashed, is a poor dwarfed specimen 
of a miserly Jew ; while elsewhere, amongst the hands 
and heads and in the attitudes, the draperies show a 
refinement, order and beauty approaching the breadth 
and dignity of the antique. " Jesus disputing with the 
Doctors" seems an adolescent Greek. In the "Visi- 
tation" the Virgin has a beauty, purity and meditative 
sentiment, which Raphael may express better but not 
feel more truly. The countenance of a magi king, in 
the softness of the eye and of the contours, is almost 
that of a woman. One might cite twenty others ; he 
reveals an entire world to his contemporaries, the 
actual world and the superior one, and it is easy to 



SANTA CEOCE. 103 

comprehend their astonishment, admiration and de- 
light. For the first time thej saw what man is aud 
Avhat he ought to be. They were not repelled, as we 
are, by the imperfections and lack of power which the 
contrast of more complete works signalizes to us and 
had not signalized to them. They did not notice ana- 
tomical deficiencies, the stiff legs and arms and violent 
attitudes badly expressed ; the apostles awkwardly 
bending backward in the " Transfiguration," and the 
thick necks of the " Doctors of the Temple ;" that 
absence of relief and incompleteness of being which 
sets before the eyes not a body but the semblance of a 
body. We realize the defects of imagery only in con- 
tact with painting ; Raphael in the time of Giotto 
would have been, like Giotto, simply an image-maker. 
We went to Santa Croce, and then to Santa Maria 
Novella, to see the development of this art. Santa 
Croce is a church of the thirteenth century modernized 
in the sixteenth, half-go thic and half-classic, austere at 
first and afterward decorated, which incongruities 
prevent it from being either beautiful or striking. It 
is filled with tombs : Galileo, Dante, Michael Angelo, 
Filicaja, Battista Alberti, Machiavelli, almost all the 
great Italians, have monuments here, most of them 
being modern, ostentatious and cold. That of Alfieri 
by Canova shows the hand of a sculptor of the Empire, 
akin to David and Girodet. The only one that makes 
any impression on the mind is that of the Countess 
Zamoiska, a sweet, pale, emaciated face, and a portrait 
in which the sculptor has dared to be simple and sin- 
cere. There is no allegory ; truth in itself is sufficiently 
impressive. Life is just departed ; we see her on her 
couch in her invalid's costume of a cap and a long 
robe gathered at the neck ; a sheet covers the rest, 
leaving the forms of the feet to be divined. Such is 
the slumber of the peaceful dead, extended after the 
last agony. 



104 THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. 

This is the church in which some small frescoes by 
Giotto were lately discovered beneath the plaster, the 
stories of John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist 
and St. Francis. Are they really by him, and has the 
restorer been faithful ? In any event they belong to 
the fourteenth century, and are curious. They do not 
lack diversity ; you see a number of personages kneel- 
ing, reclining, standing, seated, bent over and in action, 
in short in all attitudes. The devout simplicity of the 
middle ages is well expressed and the rendering of 
sentiments is spirited, i^round St. Francis, who has 
just expired, stand several monks with a cross and 
sacred banners ; one of them, near his face, holds a 
prayer-book, while others, in order to absorb sanctity, 
touch the stigmata of his feet and hand, another at the 
same time, in his monk's zeal, pressing his hand into 
the wound on his flank. The latter, and the most 
affecting, with hands clasped and contracted visage is 
still speaking to him. It is an actual scene in a feudal 
monastery. Small figures like these, however, are not 
far removed from missal paintings, displaying but little 
more than a contour and a few shadows ; everything is 
reduced to a general grayish tint ; the figure is less a 
man than an indeterminate phantom of a man. If we 
pass on to the following generation a fresco by Taddeo 
Gaddi, his most celebrated pupil, is no better ; the long, 
neckless heads of the old men are disproportioned. On 
coming down to the second generation the paintings by 
Giottino, on the gothic tomb of Bettino dei Bardi, show 
that art does not advance. His Christ in a red mantle 
appearing among angels before the armed cavalier who 
issues kneeling from his tomb, is, for the believer, a 
striking image, but an image only. Painting, indeed, 
seems to decline. A " Coronation of the Virgin" by 
Giotto, this one authentic and intact, displays on a 
golden background, between delicate ogives, four beau- 
tiful ideal angels at the feet of a noble and beneficent 



GIOTTO. 105 

Madonna. This search for ample and beautiful form, 
this remote souvenir of healthy antique beauty is pecu- 
liar to him as to Nicholas of Pisa. His successors 
have preserved his defects — feet unable to turn round, 
dislocated arms and bodies scarcely corporeal — without 
reproducing the images of force, happiness and serenity 
first descried by him and which he alone had fixed. 

On entering into the spirit of his contemporaries 
we find, on the whole, a desire to see the representation 
not of beings but of ideas.^ Cloistral mysticism and 
scholastic philosophy had filled their heads with ab- 
stract formulas and exalted sentiments : if sacred and 
sublime truth ^vas indicated to them, that sufficed; 
physical form only partially interests them ; they do not 
pursue it curiously and passionately for the love of it ; 
they demand of it only a symbol and a suggestion. 
Little does it concern them whether a wrist is fractured 
or a neck badly set on its shoulders ; they are contem- 
porary with Dante, and contemplate on their knees 
this coronation of the Virgin, black like a silhouette 
against the mystic radiance of aureoles and golden 
backgrounds ; they feel in it the rendition of a celestial 
vision, the visible embodiment of an intense reverie Kke 
those with which the poet filled his Paradise. Their 
desire is to see, not a gladiator's breast, or the living 
anatomy of an athlete, but the Church, with its trials, 
hopes and triumphs ; truth in its group of sciences and 
the concourse of its discoveries ; scholastic and encyclo- 
pedic history ; the grand and symmetrical structure of 
doctrines and experiences which St. Thomas had just 
provided as a shelter for all active souls and all reflec- 
tive intellects. Understandings sublimated by theology 
and reverie can neither desire nor produce other work. 



* The analogy between tliis state of mind and that of modern 
Germans accounts for the admiration of these pictm-es by the 
German critics. 

5^ 



106 



THE FLOEENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. 



In paintiug as in poetry they are impelled to it ; they 
are restricted to it in painting as in poesy, it being 
only necessary to see the cloister of Santa Maria 
Novella to realize the limitations and the exigencies of 
such preoccupations and such necessity. Taddeo 
Gaddi here represents philosophy, fourteen women, 
the seven profane sciences and the seven sacred 
sciences, all ranged in a straight line, each seated on a 
richly ornamented gothic chair, and each with the 
great man at her feet who acts as her interpreter; 
above them, in a still more delicate and elaborate chair, 
is St. Thomas the king of all sciences, trampling under 
foot the three great heretics Arius, Sabellius and Aver- 
roes, whilst on either side sit the prophets of the old and 
the apostles of the new Law gravely presiding with their 
insignia, and to whom, in the circular space around 
their heads, are angels, symmetrically posed, bringing 
books, flowers and flames. Subject, composition, ar- 
chitecture and characters, the entire fresco resembles 
the sculptured portal of a cathedral. — Quite like this 
and still more symbolical, is the fresco by Sim one 
Memmi, which, opposite to it, represents the Church. 
The object here is to figure the entire christian estab- 
lishment, and allegory is pushed even to the ludicrous. 
On the flank of Santa Maria di Fiore, which is the 
Church, the Pope, surrounded by cardinals and digni- 
taries, regards a community of believers at his feet in 
the shape of a flock of lambs reposing under the pro- 
tection of a faithful dominican police. Some, the dogs 
of the Lord (Domini canes) are strangling heretical 
wolves. Others, preachers, are exhorting and making 
converts. The procession turns, and the eye following it 
upward, beholds the vain joys of the world, frivolous 
dances, and, after this, repentance and penitence ; 
farther on the celestial gates guarded by St. Peter into 
which pass redeemed souls that have become young 
and innocent Hke babes ; after these the throngiQg choir 



SIMONE MEMMI. 107 

of tlie Blessed who continue on into heaven in the 
shape of angels, while the Virgin and the Lamb are 
surrounded by four symbohc animals, with the Father 
on the summit of the beam rallying and drawing to 
him the triumphant militant crowd ranged in suc- 
cessive stories from earth to Paradise. — The two pic- 
tures face each other and form a sort of abridgment of 
dominican theology. But this is all, and theology is 
not pamting any more than an emblem is a bodily 
entity. 



CHAPTEE n. 

THE FIFTEENTH CENTUET.— TRANSFOEMATION OF SOCIETY AND 
n)EAS.— PUBLIC PROSPERITY AND USEFUL IN^'ENTIONS.— LUXU- 
RIOUS TASTES.— MODERN CONCEPTIONS OF LIFE AND HAPPINESS.— 
THE HUMANISTS.— THE POETS.— THE CARNIVAL.- A NEW CAREER 
OPEN TO THE ARTS.— THE GOLDSMITH, THE PROMOTER OF ART.— 
ART NO LONGER REPRESENTS IDEAS BUT CREATURES.— PERSPEC- 
TIVE WITH PAOLO UCCELLO. 

April 12. — The number of painters and the talent of 
this school is surprising ; more than a hundred have 
been enumerated, — Angiolo Gaddi, Giovanni da Milano, 
Jacopo di Casentino, Buffalmaco, Pietro Laurati, and 
all those I saw at Sienna ; the Uffizj and the Academy 
have specimens of it ; — no positive shadows, no grada- 
tion of tints, no relief, imperfect perspective and 
anatomy are phases common to all of them. From 
1300 to 1400 there is no perceptible progTcss ; even 
according to Sacchetti the story-teller, Taddeo Gaddi, 
one of the best among these painters, regarded art as 
having degenerated, and as steadily degenerating every 
day. At all events the noble pursuit of ideal forms 
declined in order to make room for an interesting imi- 
tation of actual life, and from Giotto to Orcagna, as 
from Dante to Boccaccio, the spirit fell from heaven to 
earth. And therefore, thanks to this fall, another art 
was springing up. *' Considering," says Sacchetti, 
" the present time and the conditions of human exist- 
ence, so frequently visited with pestilences and sudden 
deaths, and seeing what great destruction and what 
vast civil and foreign wars are acclimatized here, and 
meditating over the many individuals and families that 
have thus sunk into poverty and misery, and with what 
painful effort they endure the evils thus inflicted upon 
them, and again representing to myself how many peo- 



CHANGES IN SOCIETY. 109 

pie tliere are curious in novel tilings, and principal!}' of 
that description of reading which is easy to compre- 
hend, and particularly where they derive comfort 
therefi'om, so that a little laughter may mingle with 
their sorrows I, Franco Sacchetti, a Floren- 
tine, have proposed to myself to write these tales." 
Such, substantially, is the vast change then effected in 
the public mind ; terrible municipal enmities had pro- 
duced so much evil as to relax ancient repubhcan 
energy. After so much destruction repose was neces- 
sary. To antique sobriety and gravity succeed love of 
pleasure and the quest of luxury. The belligerent 
class of great nobles were expelled and the energetic 
class of artisans crushed. Bourgeois rulers were to 
rule, and to rule tranquilly. Like the Medicis, their 
chiefs, they manufacture, trade, bank and make fortunes 
in order to expend them in intellectual fashion. War 
no longer fastens its cares upon them, as formerly, with 
a bitter and tragic grasp ; they manage it through the 
paid bands of condottieri, and these, as cunning traf- 
fickers, reduce it to cavalcades ; when they slaughter 
each other it is by mistake ; historians cite battles in 
which three, and sometimes only one soldier remains on 
the field. Diplomacy takes the place of force, and the 
mind expands as character weakens. Through this 
mitigation of war and through the establishment of 
principalities or of local tyrannies, it seems that Italy, 
like the great European monarchies, had just attained 
to its equilibrium. Peace is partially established and 
the useful arts germinate in all directions upon an 
improved social soil like a good harvest on a cleared 
and well-ploughed field. The peasant is no longer a 
serf of the glebe, but a metayer ; he nominates his own 
municipal magistrates, possesses arms and a commu- 
nal treasury ; he lives in enclosed bourgs, the houses of 
which, built of stone and cement, are large, convenient, 
and often elegant. Near Florence he erects walls, and 



no 



THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OP ART. 



near Lucca he constructs turf terraces in order to favor 
cultiyation. Lombardy has its irrigations and rotation 
of crops ; entire districts, now so many deserts around 
Lombardy and Eome, are still inhabited and richly 
productive. In the upper class the bourgeois and the 
noble labor since the chiefs of Florence are hereditary 
bankers and commercial interests are not endangered. 
Marble quarries are worked at Carrara, and foundry 
fires are Hghted in the Maremmes. We find in the 
cities manufactories of silk, glass, paper, books, flax, 
wool and hemp ; Italy alone produces as much as all 
Europe and furnishes to it all its luxuries. Thus dif- 
fused commerce and industry are not servile occupa- 
tions tending to narrow or debase the mind. A great 
merchant is a pacific general, whose mind expands in 
contact with men and things. Like a military chief- 
tain he organizes expeditions and enterprises and 
makes discoveries ; in 1421 twelve young men of the 
first famines set out for Alexandria in order to nego- 
tiate with the Sultan and found foreign agencies. Like 
the head of a state he conducts negotiations, enters into 
diplomacy, speculates on the strength of governments 
and on the interests of peoples ; the Medicis possess 
sixteen banking-houses in Europe ; they bind together 
through their business Eussia and Spain, Scotland 
and Syria ; they possess mines of alum throughout 
Italy, paying to the Pope for one of them a hundred 
thousand florins per annum; they entertain at their 
court representatives of all the powers of Europe and 
become the councillors and moderators of all Italy. 
In a small state like Florence, and in a country without 
a national army like Italy, such an influence becomes 
ascendant in and through itself ; a control over private 
fortunes leads to a management of the public funds, 
and without striking a blow or using violence, a private 
individual finds himself director of the state. 

How is he to use his power ? As a Eothschild of 



MODERN CIVILIZATION. HI 

to-day would use it ; and here does the precocious con- 
formity of this fifteenth- century civilization with our 
own strikingly appear. Consider nowadays the pros- 
perous and intelligent classes of Europe. How do they 
regard life and order things ? Not according to the miH- 
tary and heroic standard of ancient cities, or of the Ger- 
manic tribes ; not according to the mystic and melan- 
choly standard of the early christians, of believers in the 
middle ages, or of protestants in the renaissance ; not 
according to the brutal, dissolute, torpid standard of 
half-savage races or of the great oriental empires. We 
are not anxious to become heroes or ascetics, to be op- 
pressed or degraded. We regard ourselves as humane 
and cultivated, somewhat epicurean and dilletant. 
We hold the supreme end of all effort and of human 
progress to be a state in which foreign or civil wars 
may become rarer and rarer ; in which order may be 
maintained without disruption or constraint ; wherein 
steadily increasing comforts may be widely extended 
to each and to all ; where man's intellectual forces • 
may be constantly applied to the amelioration of his 
condition and to the increase of knowledge ; where, 
finally, in the midst of civil security, industrial de- 
velopment, lasting tranquilHty and universal harmony, 
he may see flourish, as in a mild and equable atmos- 
phere, the broadest spirit of investigation, the inven- 
tions of a comprehensive and tolerant mind, the deli- 
cate and superior appreciation of all human and 
natural objects, philosophy, genius, and research in 
literature, science and the arts. Such is the idea which 
these Florentines, reared like ourselves in contact with 
pacific and cosmopolitan industrial interests, begin like 
ourselves to form of happiness and human culture. 
For they are not simple voluptuaries or vulgar pa- 
gans ; it is the whole man that they develop in man, 
the intellect as well as the senses, and the intellect 
above the senses. Cosmo founded an academy of 



112 



THE FLOKENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. 



philosophy, and Lorenzo revived the platonic banquets. 
Landino, his friend, composes dialogues* the characters 
of which retiring to the convent of the Camaldoli to 
enjoy the cool atmosphere, discuss many days in order 
to decide which of the two, an active or a contem- 
plative life, is superior. Pierro, the son of Lorenzo, 
institutes a discussion on true friendship in Santa 
Maria del Fiore, and offers a silver crown as a prize 
to the victor. We find in the narratives of Politian and 
Pic de la Mirandola that the princes of commerce and 
of the state in those days enjoyed speculations of a 
refined and superior order, lofty and broad ideas, high 
flights of the intellect soaring in freedom and joy- 
ousness toward elevated and distant summits. Is 
there a greater pleasure than conversing thus in an 
apartment adorned with rare busts, before the recovered 
manuscripts of ancient wisdom, in choice and rich 
language, without the restrictions of etiquette or of 
rank, prompted by a conciliating and generous spirit 
of investigation ? It is the fete of the intellect ; it is 
perfect in Lorenzo's palace, and no preconceptions of 
social reform, or asperities of religious polemics inter- 
fere as they do later in the eighteenth century, to dis- 
turb its poetic harmony. Instead of attacking Chris- 
tianity they interpret it ; their tolerance is that of the 
contemporaries of Goethe ; Marsile Ficin seems to be a 
Schleiermacher. Educated by Cosmo he explains to 
Lorenzo "that between philosophy and religion the 
closest relationship prevails, that, the heart and the 
understanding being, according to Plato, the two wings 
by which man ascends to his celestial home, the priest 
approaches him through the former, and the philoso- 
pher through the latter ; that every religion contains 
something good ; that those alone honor God truly 
who render him incessant homage through their actions, 

* Disputationes Camaldulenses, 1468. 



LOKENZO DI MEDICI. 113 

tlieir goodness, tlieir veracity, their charity, and in 
efforts to attain to a himinoiis intelligence." Simi- 
larly to this he asserts with Plato that " the celestial 
spheres are moved by spirits that turn perpetually, 
ever seeking each other," and he develops a pagan 
astronomy beneath a christian sky. Finally, he re- 
solves the origin of the Word into that universal law 
by which "each existence generates the seed of its 
own being within itself before making itself outwardly 
manifest" and, combining together philosophy, faith 
and the sciences, he constructs out of these a harmoni- 
ous edifice in which lay wisdom and revealed dogma 
complete and purify each other, not only to furnish a 
retreat and images for the ignorant many, but again to 
open an aerial pathway and a boundless horizon to the 
elite of the thoughtful. 

Out of this leading trait others follow. What they 
are in quest of is not simply pleasure, but beauty and 
happiness, that is to say the expansion of noble as 
well as of natural instincts. These banking magistrates 
are liberal as well as capable. In thirty-seven j^ears 
the ancestors of Lorenzo expend six hundred and sixty 
thousand florins in works of charity and of public 
utility. Lorenzo himself is a citizen of the antique 
stamp, almost a Pericles capable of rushing into the 
arms of his enemy the king of Naples in order to 
avert, through personal seductions and eloquence, a war 
which menaces the safety of his country. His private 
fortune is a sort of public treasury, and his palace a 
second hotel-de-ville. He entertains the learned, aids 
them with his purse, makes friends of them, corre- 
sponds with them, defrays the expenses of editions of 
their works, purchases manuscripts, statues and medals, 
patronizes promising young artists, opens to them his 
gardens, his collections, his house and his table, and 
with that cordial familiarity and that openness, sincerity 
and simplicity of heart which place the protected on 



114 THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. 

a footing of equality with the protector as man to man 
and not as an inferior in relation to a superior. This 
is the representative man whom his contemporaries 
all accept as the accomplished -man of the century, no 
longer a Farinata or an Alighieri of ancient Florence, 
a spirit rigid, exalted and militant to its utmost capa- 
city, but a balanced, moderate and cultivated genius, 
one who, through the genial sway of his serene and 
beneficent intellect, binds up into one sheaf all talents 
and all beauties. It is a pleasure to see them expand- 
ing around him. On the one hand writers are re- 
storing and, on the other, constructing. From the 
time of Petrarch greek and latin manuscripts are 
sought for, and now they are to be exhumed in the 
convents of Italy, Switzerland, Germany and France. 
They are deciphered and restored with the aid of the 
savants of Constantinople. A decade of Livy or a 
treatise by Cicero, is a precious gift solicited by princes ; 
some learned man passes ten years of travel in ransack- 
ing distant libraries in order to find a lost book of 
Tacitus, while the sixteen authors rescued from obli- 
vion by the Poggios are counted as so many titles to 
immortal fame. A king of Naples and a Duke of 
Milan select Humanists for their chief councillors, 
and wherever in contact with this reconquered anti- 
quity the scholastic rust vanishes. A fine latin style 
again flourishes almost as pure as in the times of Augus- 
tus. On passing from the painful hexameters and 
heavy pretentious epistles of Petrarch to the elegant 
distich of Politian or, to the eloquent prose of Yalla, one 
feels himseK stirred as if by an almost sensuous de- 
light. The mouldy and abortive fruits of the middle 
ages, soured by feudal frosts, or rotted by the close 
atmosphere of cloisters, suddenly become ripe and of 
delicious flavor. The fingers and the ear involuntary 
scan the easy march of poetic dactyls and the ample 
flow of oratorical periods. Style again becomes noble 



LOKENZO DI MEDICI. 115 

and at the same time clear, and the health, joy and se- 
renity diffused through antique life re-enters the human 
mind with the harmonious proportions of language and 
the measured graces of diction. From refined language 
they pass to vulgar language, and the Italian is born 
by the side of the latin. 

In this renewed spring Lorenzo di Medici is the 
first poet, and in him first appears not only the new 
style, but the new spirit. If he imitates Petrarch in 
his sonnets, and perpetuates the sighs of ancient 
chivaMclove, he portrays in his pastorals, satires and 
verses for private circulation, a refined philosophic 
life, the graceful charms of classic landscape, the deli- 
cate enjoyments of eye and intellect, whatever he 
loves and those around him love, his poetry, through an 
easy rich and simple development, testifying to a sure 
hand, an adult century and a complete art. 

Out of this rich harmony rises a joyous strain, that of 
the epoch, and which indicates the fatal declivity to 
which they are tending. Lorenzo himself amuses the 
crowd and composes for it the plan and triumphs of 
the carnival. " How beautiful is youth !" say the sing- 
ers in his "Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne." "But 
youth flies ; let him who seeks happiness be happy to- 
day, for there is no certainty in the morrow." Here, in 
the restored paganism, shines out epicurean gaiety, a 
determination to enjoy at any and all hours, and that 
instinct for pleasure which a grave philosophy and 
political sobriety had thus far tempered and restrained. 
With Pulci, Berni, Bibiena, Ariosto, Bandelli, Aretino, 
and so many others, we soon see the advent of volup- 
tuous debauchery and open skepticism, and later a 
cynical unbounded licentiousness. These joyous and 
refined civilizations based on a worship of pleasure and 
intellectuality — Greece of the fourth century, Provence 
of the twelfth, and Italy of the sixteenth — were not 
enduring. Man in these lacks some checks. After 



116 



THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. 



sudden outbursts of genius and creativeness lie \van- 
ders away in the direction of license and egotism ; tlie 
degenerate artist and thinker makes room for the sophist 
and the dilletant.* But in this transient brilliancy his 
beauty was charming, and following ages, less brilHant 
externally although firmer on their foundations, cannot 
refrain from sympathetically gazing on the harmonious 
edifice whose elegance no e&jrt of theirs can revive and 
whose finesse condemneci i^to fragility. 

It is in this world, agaiia? become pagan, that painting 
revives, and the new tastes ^^^is to gratify show before- 
hand the road she is'lo icllow ; henceforth she is to 
decorate the houses of rich merchants who love anti- 
quity and who desire to li\^ daintily. With the direc- 
tion the point of departure 'is already traced ; the gold- 
smith's art furnishes it ; through the small dimensions 
of his works the goldsmith is -^e natural ministrant to 
private luxury ; he chases arms, plate, bedposts, chim- 
ney-piers and the ornamentation of buffets. All 
jeweby and gems issue from his hand, and, Hke bronze 
and silver, he works in wood, marble, stucco and precious 
stones ; there is nothing appertaining to the embellish- 
ment of domestic life that does not stimulate his talent 
or develop his art. This art moreover, through its pre- 
cocious maturity, outran all the others. Nicholas of 
Pisa, in the middle of the thirteenth century abeady 
sculptures small figures which, in their gravity, beauty, 
noble expression and solid structure, recall a virile anti- 
quity and announce a virile renaissance. Through a 
unique privilege sculpture, at its very first step, found 
complete, models in the relics of Greece and Rome, and 
at the same time complete instruments in the founder's 
furnace and the mason's mallet ; whilst painting, poorly 
guided and poorly provided, had to wait until the slow 
progress of centuries could free perfect corporeal forms 
from the disturbed visions of the middle ages, until a 
revival of geometrical studies could teach perspective, 



THE goldsmith's ART. 117 

and until tlie educated eye and professional experiments 
could introduce the use of oil and gradations of color. 
Hence it is, in tlie new race about to be run, that the 
elder sister surpassed and instructed the younger. To- 
ward 1400 Ghiberti, Donatello and Jacopo della Quer- 
cia are adults, and the works they produce during the 
twenty following years are either so full of life, so pure, 
so expressive or so grand that art is not to go beyond 
it. All are goldsmiths and* all issue from a workshop ; 
Brunelleschi himself, their master, began there ; it is 
in this shop that is formed i;he new generation of paint- 
ers. Paolo Uccello worked in it under Ghiberti ; Maz- 
zolino acquired in it the reputation of a skilful polisher 
and excellent in modelling the folds of drapery. Pollai- 
olo, the pupil of Ghiberti's father-in-law and then of 
Ghiberti himself executed a quail on the doors of the 
Baptistery which " only liad, to fly." Dello, Verocchio, 
Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Francia, and later Andrea del 
Sarto, with all the sculptors who make their debut in 
the goldsmith's art, Lucca della Bobbia, Cellini, Ban- 
dinelli and — how many more might I name ! Those 
who did not file bronze felt, nevertheless the ascendancy 
of the workers in bronze ; Masaccio, the friend of Don- 
atello, studied under Brunelleschi ; Leonardo da 
Yinci in the studio of Yerocchio, modelled clay statu- 
ettes and then draped them with wet linen in order to 
draw them afterward and imitate their relief. Through 
such practices and such an education, the hands thus 
manipulating forms imbibed the sentiment of solid sub- 
stance and carried this sentiment into painting. Hence- 
forth the painter feels that a flat image is not a body. 
It is essential that a figure should have something within 
it as well as wdthout it, that behind external appearance 
and superficial color the spectator should feel depth, ful- 
ness, flesh, bones, middle distances, backgrounds, firm- 
ness of posture, actual spaces and exact proportions. 
He traces his lines, studies his perspective, undrapes 



118 THE FLOKENTINE SCHOOL OF AKT. 

bodies, marks the muscles, feels tlieir joints, lifts tliem 
up and dissects them, and at length, master of every 
process by which .superficial color affords the eye the 
sensation of living substance, he places art on its en- 
during foundation, the exact and complete imitation of 
nature as the artist sees nature and as nature is. 

Nature, indeed, as he sees her and as she is, is 
henceforth to interest men. Liberated from the celes- 
tial world and brought back to the natural world, they 
are no longer to contemplate ideas or symbols but 
persons and existences. For them actual objects are 
no longer a simple sign through which flashes mystic 
thought ; they have a beauty and value of their own, 
and the age that fixes itself on them no longer leaves 
them in order to gaze beyond. Thus exalted and enno- 
bled they merit representation without suppression; 
their proportions and forms, the minutest details of as- 
pect and situation assume importance, and the pictur- 
esque infidelity of the artist would now be as offensive as 
would have been formerly the theological infidelity of 
the christian. In this imitation of sensible appearances 
the first point is a knowledge of the dimensions of ob- 
jects as affected b}^ remoteness ; their size varies to the 
eye according to distance, and the truth of the whole is 
the indispensable foundation on which is to be placed 
the truth of detail. Paolo Uccello, instructed by the 
mathematician Manetti, promulgates the laws of per- 
spective and passes his life fanatically developing the 
results of his invention. Everybody is astonished and 
delighted at comprehending for the first time through 
him the veritable outward phases of objects, to see a 
vanishing ditch, avenue or the furrows of a ploughed 
field, to measure the distance separating two figures, to 
feel the foreshortening of a man's body reclining feet 
foremost, to detect the innumerable and rigorously de- 
fined changes which the slightest variation of distance 
imparts to the forms and dimensions of a figure. But 



NATURE IN ART. 119 

he goes further and peoples this nature of which he 
has re-estabhshed the proportions. He conceives an 
affection for all sorts of living creatures, and through 
him we see entering within the circle of human sympa- 
thy, dogs, cats, bulls, serpents, lions, " ready to bite and 
full of haughtiness," deer and fawns " expressing velo- 
city and fear," birds with their plumage, fish with their 
scales, all with their own forms and peculiarities, for- 
merly overlooked or despised, but now discovered and 
reanimated ; they are still distinguishable in his faded 
frescoes of Santa Maria Novella and public taste follows 
him in the path he marked out. He paints in the 
houses of the Medicis stories of animals, in those of the 
Peruzzi the figures of the four elements, each with an 
appropriate animal, a mole, a fish, a salamander and 
a chameleon. Henceforth everybody desires to con- 
template in his house the living images of the human 
and of the natural world. The cornices of apartments, 
the wood-work of bedsteads, huge chests for keeping 
clothing are all painted with " fables from the works of 
Ovid and other poets or with stories narrated by the 
greek and latin historians; and similarly, jousts, hunt- 
ing parties and tales of love .... fetes, spectacles of 
the day and other like subjects according to each man's 
taste." They were to be found in the dwelling of Lo- 
renzo di Medici and also in the noblest mansions of 
Florence. " Dello thus painted for Giovanni di Medici 
the entire garniture of a chamber, and Donatello mod- 
elled for him the gilded stucco of the surrounding frames. 
The anatomists are coming to spread through the 
houses, side by side with antique nudities, the excited 
and muscular nudities of tlie new art, all those bold and 
sensual effigies that are so obnoxious to the rigorism 
of Savonarola. What a distance between this social 
condition and that of the contemporaries of Dante, and 
how plainly does worldly paganism in life begin with 
picturesque paganism in art ! 



CHAPTEK III. 

POETRAITURE OF ACTUAL FORM ; MODELLING AND ANATOMY WITH 
ANTONIO POLLAIOLO AND YEEOCCHIO.— CREATION OF IDEAL FORM 
WITH MASACCIO.— ORIGINALITY AND LIMITS OF ART IN THE FIF- 
TEENTH CENTURY.— FRA FILLPPO LIPPI AND GHHiLANDAIJO.— THE 
SURVIVORS BOTTICELLI. 

What conception of man is now to be developed, and 
what corporeal type is it wMcli everywliere repeated is 
going to cover the walls? One there is which is to 
reign more than haK a century and, nntil the advent of 
Leonardo da Yinci, Eaphael and Michael Angelo, bind 
together into one sheaf the most diverse talents. This is 
the actual personage, the contemporary Florentine 
figure, a body undraped as it is presented in the living 
model, man exactly reproduced through literal imita- 
tion and not transformed through ideal conceptions. 
When actual life is for the first time recognized, and 
penetrating into its structure, the admirable mechan- 
ism of its parts is understood, this contemplation 
suffices and nothing more is desired. There are so 
many things in a body and in a head ! Each irregu- 
larity, an elongation of the neck, a contraction of the 
nose, a peculiar curl of the lip, forms a part of the indi- 
vidual ; to improve these would be to mutilate him : 
he would no longer be the same but another ; the re- 
lationship which exists between this irregularity and 
the rest is so strong that it could not be dissolved 
without marring the whole. The personage is a unit 
and it can only be expressed by a, portrait. Hence the 
portraits which the frescoes of the time display in 
lines and in groupings in the churches, and not merely 
portraits of the face but again portraits of the body. 
The anatomist-goldsmith PoUaiolo or Yerocchio places 



KNOWLEDGE OF ANATOMY. 131 

a nude subject on a table, remoYes the skin and notes 
in liis memory the projections of the bones, the expan- 
sion of the muscles and the interlacing of the tendons, 
and then with lights and darks, he transfers the model 
to canvas as he would have transfixed it in bronze 
by rehefs and depressions. If you were to say to him 
that this clavicle was too prominent, that that section of 
the skin ridged with muscles resembled a coil of rope, 
that these gladiators' and centaurs' masks had the re- 
pulsive ugliness of vulgar features convulsed and dis- 
torted by orgie and scuffle he would not comprehend 
you. He would point to some workman, to a passing 
figure, in the first place to his subject, especially the 
flayed one, and he would reply, or feel, that to em- 
bellish life was to falsify hfe. It is just these folds of 
the features, these dry angles of raised and intersect- 
ing muscles which interest him ; his modeller's or 
chaser's thumb buries itself into them and he im- 
agines the contact ; they harbor the active, accumulated 
force which is about to concentrate and expend itself 
in blows ; they cannot be too boldly shown ; in his eyes 
they constitute the entire man. Luca Signorelli, 
having lost a beloved son, has the body stripped and 
minutely draws every muscle in order the better to 
preserve him in his memory. Nanni Grosso, dying in 
a hospital, refused a crucifix offered to him demanding 
to have one by Donatello brought to him, declaring 
that, otherwise, "he would die unredeemed, so dis- 
pleasing to him were the badly executed works of his 
art." Anatomical form is so impressed on their minds 
that the human being in whom they do not feel it 
seems to them empty and unsubstantial. An omo- 
plate, a muscle gives them transports of pleasure. 
" Know," saj's Cellini later, "that the five false ribs form 
around the navel, as the torso bends backward or for- 
ward, a multitude of reliefs and depressions which are 
among the principal beauties of the human body 



122 THE FLOKENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. 

Tliou wilt delight in drawing the vertebrae, for they are 
magnificent .... Thou wilt then draw the bone placed 
between the two hips ; it is very fine and is called the 

crupper or sacrum The important point in the 

art of drawing is to draw well a naked man or a naked 
woman." This is readily apparent in their works. In 
the " St. Sebastian" of PoUaiolo the interest of the sub- 
ject no longer centres on the martyr but on the execu- 
tioners. With the artist as with them the main thing 
is to properly transfix the patient. To this end six 
men leaning forward or bending back, all only two 
paces off so as not to miss the mark, string or draw 
their arbaletes, with half-open mouths through excess 
of attention, their brows frowning as the shot is made, 
and their legs extended and widened in order to steady 
their hands ; the painter thought of nothing but of dis- 
playing bodies and attitudes. His brother Piero, in a 
similiar way at San Giminiano has put into a " Corona- 
tion of the Virgin" four tawny emaciated saints for 
no other purpose than to display their veins, muscles 
and tendons. Similarly, again, Yerocchio in his 
" Baptism of Christ" at the Academy, displays an old 
dry wrinkled figure of Christ, an angular St. John 
and a gruff, melancholy angel in striking contrast to 
the handsome youth, half inclining, which his young 
pupil Leonardo da Yinci has placed in one corner as if 
the sign and dawn of a perfect art. Not only the anat- 
omist, the amateur of the real, the plaster modeller of 
the naked figure, but again the goldsmith, the chaser 
of bronze and the cutter of marble are visible in all 
these figures. As soon as one imagines them cast in 
metal they appear beautiful. The draperies, in rigid 
and broken folds, would be suitable in an ornamental 
statuette. The action too stiff, and the attitude too 
forced, would be proper in a statue. A small " Hercu- 
les" by Pollaiolo in the Uffizj, with its muscles strained 
and swollen from foot to head in order to overpower 



MASACCIO. 133 

Antaeus whom lie clasps and is crushing, would be a 
masterpiece if it were only in bronze. The sharp 
elbows and knees would not be noticed, or the hard- 
ness of its outlines and its monotonous color ; one 
would be sensible of nothing but the torsion of the 
fi'ame and the furious energy of the effort. In this 
Hmited field, and under its mistress, sculpture, paint- 
ing progresses, still rigid and fettered, and is seen to 
take the lead but once. 

It is in the hands of Masaccio, a young man born 
with the century who died at the age of twenty-six, 
that she takes this great step ; people at the present day 
still go to the Brancacci chapel to contemplate this 
isolated creator whose precocious example no one fol- 
lowed. Not only did he die too young, but again he 
was indifferently appreciated during his life, " to such 
an extent," says Yasari, " that no inscription w^as placed 
on his tomb." In order to become the head of a school 
and direct public taste, it is essential to be not merely 
a great artist but again a skiKul politician and a man 
of the world. Masaccio was so poorly quahfied for 
self-advancement that he received no commission from 
the Medicis. "He always lived self-concentrated," 
says Yasari, " neglecting everything else, as one who, 
having fixed his whole mind and will on things of art, 

thought little of himself and still less of others 

never disposed in any respect to dw^ell on the cares and 

objects of this world, not even on his own clothing 

demanding money of his debtors only when pressed by 
urgent necessities." Living in this way one may get 
to have talent but not authority, and produce master- 
pieces without securing preachers to extol them. 
Among the first he studied nudity and foreshortening, 
scrupulously observing perspective and familiarizing his 
hand with difficulties, thoroughly imbued with the sen- 
timent of the real, "regarding painting as no other 
than a reproduction from life of nature's objects by 



124 THE FLOEENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. 

means of color and drawing, and continually laboring to 
make figures as living as possible in tlie imitation of 
truth." Besides these gifts, which he held in common 
with his contemporaries, he had another peculiar to him- 
self, and which carried him higher. There is a picture 
by him in the Uffizj gallery of an old man in a cap 
and gray robe, with a wrinkled face and a somewhat 
mocking expression ; it is a portrait but not an ordinary 
portrait ; he copies the real, but it is copied grandly. 
Such is the idea, or rather a faint idea of him, which 
one bears with him into this Brancacci chapel, covered 
by him with paintings. All, however, are not by his 
hand; Masolino began and Filippino completed some 
of them : but the portions painted by Masaccio can be 
distinguished without much trouble ; whether the three 
artists are linked together by secret conformity of feel- 
ing, or the latter has adhered to the cartoons of the 
second, the work in its different dates only indicates 
the different courses of the same spirit. 

What first strikes one is that they all set out from 
the real, that is to say, from the living individual as 
the eyes behold him. The baptized young man whom 
Masaccio shows naked, shivering as he comes out of 
the water, is a contemporary bather who has taken a 
dip in the Arno on too cold a day. And likewise his 
Adam and Eve driven from Paradise are Florentines 
whom he has undraped, the man with slim thighs and 
blacksmith's shoulders, the woman with a short neck 
and clumsy form, and both with ugly-shaped legs : they 
are artisans or ordinary people who have not led, like 
the Greeks, a naked existence, and whose bodies have 
not been fashioned by gymnastics. Similarly again 
the resuscitated child by Lippi, kneeling before the 
apostle, has the meagre boniness and spindling limbs 
of a modern infant. And, finally, almost all the heads 
are portraits ; two cowled friars on the left of St. Peter 
are monks leaving their convent. We know the names 



MASACCIO. 125 

of the contemporaries who loaned him their heads : 
Bartolo di Angiolino Angioli, Granacci, Soderini, Pulci, 
Pollaiolo, Botticelli, Lippi, himself; so that this art 
seems to have owed its being to surrounding life, as 
plaster applied to the face repeats the modelling of the 
forms it is subjected to. 

How is it then that these personages live with a superior 
life ? How does it happen that an exact imitation of 
the real is not a servile imitation of it ? And how did 
Masaccio abstract noble personages from ordinary per- 
sonages ? Because in a multitude of observable details 
he eliminated some of more importance than others, and 
subordinated the rest to these. Because he distinguish- 
ed, in the elements of the body and the head, different 
values, and effaced or diminished the least in order to 
augment and render prominent the greatest. Because, 
having before him a nude man and woman when paint- 
ing this Eve and this Adam, this baptized young man and 
the rest, he did not adhere to the innumerable and infi- 
nite distinctions of color and form throughout. Because 
this or that flabby stomach, or foot spoiled by its shoe, 
or minute protuberance of a cartilage or bone did not 
seem to him the essential of man. And, indeed, the 
essential is elsewhere ; it is in the solidity of the bony 
structure, in the setting of the muscles and tendons, in 
the present and possible action of balanced members, 
in the universal quivering of the skin over contracting 
flesh, in the impulse and general dilation of animal ac- 
tivity. The nude or the flayed model only served him 
as an indication ; he laid up details in his memory not 
to repeat them as from a manual but to comprehend 
their attachments and dependencies, and make their 
functions and vitality realized. It is the same in this 
respect with the face as with the body. That which 
marks distinctions between contemporary heads, that 
which distinguishes merchant from merchant, or monk 
from monk, that which is accidental in each, the special 



126 



THE FLOEEXTDsE SCHOOL OF AET. 



deformity or grimace stamped by liabits of late hours 
or of big dinners ; — what heed can I give to these ? 
"What concerns me and is of consequence is the gTand. 
dominant passion/the prochvity and leading intellectual 
character, and especially whatever is energetic, de- 
cided, peculiar to action or to thought, to calculation or 
to resistance. What I desire to see is the grand lines 
of physical structure as of moral structure. The rest is 
secondary in life as in painting, and hence it is 
that this painting although based upon the real 
attains to the ideal. It copies indiyiduals but only 
that which is general in them ; it leaves to heads 
their originality and to bodies their imperfections, 
but it makes character prominent in the heads and 
life in the bodies. It abandons the flat and scrupu- 
lous style in order to enter upon the broad and sim- 
ple style. Sometimes, indeed, carried away by 
its impetus, it fully attains to it. Several figures, 
through theii' severe gTandeur, through the gravity of 
their countenances, through their vigorous chins seem 
to be antique consular characters. St. Peter heal- 
ing the sick with his shadow walks with royal 
energy like a Eoman accustomed to lead multitudes ; 
Jesus paying tribute is as noble and calm as one of 
Raphael's heads, and nothing is more beautiful than 
these grand compositions of forty personages, all simply 
draped, all gTave and severe, all in different attitudes, 
all ranged around the nude infant and St. Paul who 
raises it up, between two masses of architecture and 
before a decorated wall, a silent assembly fi'amed upon 
both flanks by two distinct groups, one of accidental 
gazers, the other of kneeling men, corresponding to 
each other and through their gTaduated harmony add- 
ing a richer fulness to this ample symphony. 

Unfortunately they did not maintain themselves on 
the heights they reached. Artists are still too absorbed 
by the new discovery and the minute observation of 



TEA FILIPPO LIPPI. 137 

the real to lift their eyes upward. Their hands are not 
free. In every art it is necessary to linger long over 
the true in order to attain to the beautiful. The eye 
fixing itself on an object, begins by noting details with 
an excess of precision and fulness ; it is only later, when 
the inventory is complete, that the mind, master of its 
wealth, rises higher in order to take or neglect what 
suits it. The leading master of this epoch is Fra Filippo 
Lippi, a curious, exact imitator of actual life ; pushing 
the finish of his works so far that, according to a con- 
temporary, an ordinary painter might labor five years 
day and night without succeeding in reproducing one of 
his pictures; selecting for his figures short and round 
heads, personages somewhat gross, virgins who are good, 
simple lasses quite remote from the sublime, and angels 
resembhng stout and chubby school or choir boys, 
somewhat vulgar and obstinate. At the same time, 
however, he aims at relief, defines contour, makes the 
petty details of a vestment wall or halo advance and 
recede with that vigorous and accurate drawing which 
conveys to the eye the sensation of a corporeal object 
definitely placed and perfect. Otherwise, he is adapt- 
ed in morals as well as in talent, to the spirit of the 
time, — highly popular, greatly admired, impetuous, 
jovial, a favorite of the Medicis and protected by them 
in his freaks ; he elopes with a nun although a monk ; 
he jumps from a window in order to find his mistress ; 
he is " extraordinarily lavish in love matters devoting 
himself to them unceasingly, never stopping even up to 
his death," at which his protectors " laugh," declaring 
that rare geniuses must be pardoned, " because they are 
celestial essences and not beasts of burden." 

Although this imitation in which the Florentine 
painters delight is too literal, it has, on the whole, a 
special grace. It is necessary to visit the church of 
Santa Maria Novella in order to appreciate its charm. 
There, Ghhlandaijo, the master of Michael Angelo, has 



128 THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. 

coYerecl the choir with his frescoes. They are poorly 
lighted and awkwardly piled up' on top of each other ; 
but toward midday they can be seen. They represent 
the story of St. John the Baptist and the Virgin, the 
figures being half the size of life. Through education 
as well as instinct this painter, like his contemporaries, 
is a copyist. He sketched people while passing his 
goldsmith's shop and the resemblance of his figures 
excited admiration. He regarded " painting as wholly 
consisting of drawing." Man, to the artists of this 
epoch, is still only a form ; but he had so just a sen- 
timent of this form, and of all forms, that on copying 
the Eoman amphitheatres and triumphal arches, he 
drew them as accurately with the eye as if with a com- 
pass. Thus prepared one can readily see what speak- 
ing, striking portraits he put into his frescoes ; there 
are twenty-one of these, representing persons whose 
names are known, Christoforo Landini, Ficin, Politian, 
the bishop of Arezzo, others of women — that of the 
beautiful Ginevra de' Benci, all belonging to families 
controlling the patronage of the chapel. The figures 
are a little commonplace ; several of them are hard and 
have sharp noses, and are too literal ; they lack grand- 
eur, the painter keeping near the ground, or only cau- 
tiously flying above the surface ; it is not the bold 
flight of Masaccio. Nevertheless he composes groups 
and architecture, he arranges figures in circular sanctu- 
aries, he drapes them in a half-Florentine half-Grecian 
costume which unites or opposes in happy contrasts and 
gTaceful harmonies, the antique and the modern ; above 
all this he is simple and sincere. An attractive mo- 
ment this, a delicate aurora consisting of that youthful- 
ness of spirit in which man first recognizes the poesy 
of reality. At such a time he traces no line that does 
not express a personal sentiment ; whatever he relates 
he has experienced ; as yet there is no accepted type 
which bodies forth in conventional beauty the budding 



TYPES OF REAL LIFE. 129 

aspirations of his breast ; the greater liis timidity the 
more vivacious he is, and the forms somewhat dry on 
which he leans are the discreet confessions of a new 
spirit which dares neither to escape from nor reserve 
itself. One might pass hours here in contemplating 
the figures of the women ; they are the flower of the 
city in the fifteenth century ; we see them as they lived, 
each with her original expression and the charming 
irregularity of real life ; all with those half-modern 
half-feudal Florentine features so animated and so 
intelligent. In the "Nativity of the Yirgin" the 
young girl in a silk skirt, who comes in on a visit, is 
the plain demure young lady of good condition ; in the 
"Nativity of St. John" another, standing, is a medi- 
aeval duchess ; near her the servant bringing in fruits, 
in statuesque drapery, has the impulse, vdvacity and 
force of an antique nymph, the two ages and the two 
orders of beauty thus meeting and uniting in the sim- 
plicity of the same true sentiment. A fresh smile rests 
on their lips ; underneath their semi-immobility, under 
these remains of rigidity which imperfect painting still 
leaves, one can divine the latent passion of an in- 
tact spirit and a healthy body. The curiosity and 
refinement of ulterior ages have not reached them. 
Thought, with them, slumbers ; they walk or look 
straight before them with the coolness and placidity 
of virginal purity ; in vain will education with all its 
animated elegancies rival the divine uncouthness of 
their gravity. 

This is why I so highly prize the paintings of this 
age ; none in Florence have I studied more. They are 
often deficient in skill and are always dull ; they lack 
both action and color. It is the renaissance in its 
dawn, a dawn gray and somewhat cool, as in the spring 
when the rosy hue of the clouds begins to tinge a 
pale crystal sky, and when, like a flaming dart the first 
ray of sunshine glides over the crests of the furrows. 



130 



THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. 



It lasts even after great genius has arisen above the 
horizon. Amidst the illuminated campagna one distin- 
guishes a sort of valley in which the inanimate forms 
of the ancient ^yle are still perpetuated. Roselli, 
Piero di Cosimo, Credi and Botticelli do not desire to 
leave it ; they retain dry outlines, feeble color, and 
irregular, ungracious figures — the scrupulous imitation 
of the real ; their development is on another side, Bot- 
ticelli especially, through the expression of deep and 
fervid sentiment, through tenderness and humility, 
through the intense morbid reverie of his pensive vir- 
gins, through frail emaciated forms, through the quiv- 
ering delicacy of his nude Venuses, through the suf- 
fering and writhing beauty of his precocious and nerv- 
ous creatures, all soul and all spirit, who portend the 
infinite but are not sure of living. There is similar 
merit in all the masters of this period, Mantegna, Pin- 
turicchio, Francia, Signorelli, and Perugino ; each one 
invents for himself ; each marks out his own path and 
follows his own inspiration. Let his path be a narrow 
one and let him stumble occasionally, it is of little con- 
sequence ; his steps are his own, his inspiration comes 
from himself and not from another. Later, painters 
are to do better, but they will be less original ; they 
will advance faster, but in a troop ; they will go farther, " 
but in the hands of the great masters. To my eyes 
disciplined thought is not the equivalent of free 
thought ; what I penetrate to in a work of art, as in 
every other work, is the state of the soul that produced 
it. In setting up a standard, even without reaching 
it, one lives more nobly and more manfully than in ac- 
quiring one he has not himself created. Henceforward 
all talent is to be mastered by genius, and artists are 
to become less as art becomes greater. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE CONVENT OF SAN MAECO.— BEATO ANGELICO.-HIS LIFE AND 
WORKS.— PROLONGATION OF MYSTIC SENTIMENT AND ART. 

April 13. — What commotion and what travail in this 
fifteenth century ! In the midst of this pagan tumultu- 
ous hive there stands a tranquil convent wherein sweetly 
and piously dreams a mystic of ancient days, Fra An- 
gehco da Fiesole. 

This convent remains almost intact ; two square 
courts in it expose their files of small columns sur- 
mounted by arcades, with thek little old tile roofs. In 
one of the rooms is a sort of memorial or genealogical 
tree, bearing the names of the principal monks who 
have died in the odor of sanctity. Among these is 
that of Savonarola, and mention is made of his having 
perished through false accusation. Two cells are still 
shown which he inhabited. Fra Angelico lived in the 
convent before him, and paintings by his hand decorate 
the chapter-hall, the corridors and the gray walls of 
the cells. 

He had dwelt a stranger in the world, and maintained 
amidst fresh sensations and curiosities the innocent, 
ravished life in God which the " Fioretti" describe. He 
lived in a state of primitive simplicity and obedience ; 
it is said of him that " one morning being invited to 
breakfast by Pope Nicholas Y. his conscience forbade 
him to eat meat without the permission of his prior, 
never reflecting that the Pope's authority was supe- 
rior." He refused the dignities of his order, and con- 
cerned himseK only with prayer and penitence. " When 
any work was required of him he would answer with 



133 



THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. 



singular goodness of lieart that they must go and ask 
the prior, and if the prior wished it he would not fail 
them." He never desired to paint any but the saints, 
and it is narrated of him that " he never took up his 
brushes without kneeling in prayer, and never painted 
a Christ on the cross without his eyes being filled with 
tears." It was his custom not to retouch or recast any 
of his pictures, but to let them remain as they first left 
his hand, " believing that they were as they were 
through the will of God." We can well . understand 
why such a man did not study anatomy or contempo- 
rary models. His art is primitive like his life. He be- 
gan with missals and so continued on the walls ; gold, 
vermihon, bright scarlet, brilliant greens, the illumina- 
tions of the middle ages display themselves on his can- 
vases the same as on old parchments. He even some- 
times applies them to the roofs ; an infantile piety is 
eager to decorate its saint or idol and render it radiant 
to excess. When he abandons small figures and com- 
poses on a grand scale a scene of twenty personages, 
he falters;^' his figures are bodiless. Their affecting 
devotional expression is inadequate to animate them ; 
they remain hieratic and stiff; all he comprehended 
was their spirit. That which he paints understandingly, 
and which he has everywhere repeated, are visions and 
the visions of blessed and innocent spirits. " Grant, O 
most sweet and loving Jesus, that I may rest in Thee 
above all living creatures, above all health and beauty, 

all glory and honor all gifts and presents that 

Thou canst bestow and diffuse, all joy and gladness 

that the soul can feel and can cherish In my 

God do I find all things What do I desire 

more, and what greater happiness? God is my all. 
This sufficeth for him that understandeth ; and to re- 
peat it often is sweet to him that loveth When 

* A Chilst and seventeen saints in the convent of San Marco. 



FRA ANGELICO. 133 

Thou art present all things yield delight ; but when 
Thou art absent all is pain. Thou givest a tranquil 
heart, then bringest perfect peace and joy."* 

Such adoration as this is never unaccompanied by in- 
ward images ; with closed eyes they are persistently fol- 
lowed, and without effort, as in a dream. Like a mother 
who, on finding herself alone, sees floating in memory 
the features of a beloved son, like a chaste poet who, in 
midnight silence, imagines and again sees the down- 
cast eyes of his beloved, so does the heart involuntarily 
summon up and contemplate the concourse of divine 
figures. No object disturbs him in this peaceable con- 
templation. Around him all actions are prescribed and 
all objects are colorless ; day after day uniform hours 
bring before him the same white walls, the same dark 
lustre of the wainscoting, the same straight folds of 
cowls and frocks, the same rustling of steps passing to 
and fro between refectory and chapel. Delicate, inde- 
terminate sensations vaguely arise in this monotony, 
while tender reverie, like a rose sheltered from life's rude 
blasts, blooms afar from the great highway clattering 
with human footsteps. There is displayed to the eye 
the magnificence of eternal day, and henceforth every 
effort of the painter centres on expressing it. Glitter- 
ing staircases of jasper and amethyst rise above each 
other up to the throne on which sit celestial beings. 
Golden aureoles gleam around their brows ; red, azure 
and green robes, fringed, bordered and striped with 
gold, flash like glories. Gold runs in threads over 
baldachins, accumulates in embroideries on copes, ra- 
diates like stars on tunics and gleams from tiaras, while 
topazes, rubies and diamonds sparkle in flaming constel- 
lations on jewelled diadems.f All is light ; it is the out- 



* From the " Imitation of Jesus Christ." 

f See " The Coronation of the Virgin " in the Louvre, and the 
twelve angels around the infint Jesus in the Uffizj. 



134 THE FLOEENTINE SCHOOL OF AKT. 

burst of mystic illumination. Througli this prodigali- 
ty of gold and azure one tint prevails, that of the sun 
and of paradise. This is not common daylight ; it is too 
brilliant; it effaces the brightest hues, it envelops 
forms on all sides ; it weakens and reduces them to mere 
shadows. In fact the soul is everything ; ponderable 
matter becomes transfigured ; its relief is no longer per- 
ceptible, its substance having evaporated ; nothing re- 
mains but an ethereal form which swims in azure and 
in splendor. At other times the blessed approach para- 
dise over luxuriant meadows strewn with red and white 
flowers, and under beautiful blooming trees; angels con- 
duct them, and, hand in hand, they form fraternally a cir- 
cle ; the burden of the flesh no longer oppresses them ; 
their heads starred with rays they glide through the 
air up to the flaming gate from which issues a golden 
illumination ; Christ, aloft, within a triple row of an- 
gels pressed together like flowers, smiles upon them 
beneath his aureole. Such are the dehghts and the 
radiance that Dante has portrayed. 

His personages are worthy of their situation. Al- 
though beautiful and ideal his Christ, even in celestial 
triumph, is pale, pensive and slightly emaciated ; he 
is the eternal friend, the somewhat melancholy consoler 
of the "Imitation," the poetic merciful Lord as the 
saddened heart imagines him ; he is not the over-heal- 
thy figure of the renaissance painters. His long curling 
tresses and blonde beard sweetly surround his features ; 
sometimes he smiles faintly, while his gravity is never 
dissociated with affectionate benignity. At the day of 
judgment he does not curse ; only on the side of the 
damned his hand falls, while on the right, toward the 
blessed, toward those whom he loves, his full regards 
are turned. Near him the Virgin, kneeling with down- 
cast eyes, seems to be a young maiden that has just 
communed. Occasionally her head is too large as is 



VISIONS. 133 

common witli the inspired ; her shoulders are narrow 
and her hands too small ; the spiritual, inward life, too 
highly developed, has reduced the other ; the long blue 
mantle wrought in gold in which she is wholly envel- 
oped, scarcely allows it to be supposed that she has a 
body. No one can imagine before having seen it such 
immaculate modesty, such virginal candor ; by her side 
Raphael's virgins are merely simple vigorous peasant 
girls. And the other figures are of the same order. 
Every expression is based on two sentiments, the in- 
nocence of the calm spirit preserved in the cloister, 
and the rapture of the blessed spirit that sees God. 
The saints are portraits, but refined and beatified ; ce- 
lestial transfiguration eliminates from the body as 
from the soul the ideal portion concealed and 
transformed by the grossness of terrestrial being. 
No wrinkles appear on the countenances of the aged ; 
they bloom afresh under the touch of eternal youth. 
No traces of phj'sical austerity are visible ; they have 
entered into the realm of pure felicity. The features 
of the blessed are in repose, we feel that they rest pas- 
sive suspended in ecstasy ; to move, to disturb a fold of 
their drapery would endanger some part of the vision ; 
they turn their eyes to the heights above without bend- 
ing their bodies ; they are wrapt in meditation in order the 
better to enjoy their beatitude ; they speak like the dis- 
ciples of the Evangelist, " Lord, it is good for us to be 
here ; if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles ; 
one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias." A 
few, the disciples, seem to be juvenile choristers, monas- 
tic novices imbued with a spirit of veneration, and 
timid. On seeing the infant Jesus they give way to a 
movement of infantile sprightliness and then, fearful of 
having done something wrong, hesitate and draw back. 
There are no violent or eager emotions in this world ; all is 
partially veiled or arrested midway by the tranquillity 



136 THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. 

or the obedience of tlie cloister. But tlie most charm- 
ing figures are those of the angels. We see them kneel 
down in silent rows around thrones or press together 
in garlands in the azure. The youngest are amiable, 
candid children, with minds unruffled by a suspicion of 
evil ; they do not think much ; each head, in its golden 
circle, smiles and is happy ; it will smile forever, and 
this is its entire life. Others with flamboyant wings, 
hke birds of paradise, play on instruments or sing, and 
their countenances are radiant. One of them, raising 
his trumpet to put it to his lips, stops as if surprised by 
a resplendent vision. This one with a vioHncello to 
his shoulder seems to muse over the exquisite tones of 
his own instrument. Two others with joined hands 
seem to be contemplating and adoring. One, quite 
youthful, with the full figure of a young girl, bends for- 
ward, as if to listen before striking her cymbal. To the 
harmony of tones must be added the harmony of col- 
ors. Tints do not increase or decrease in strength and 
intermingle as in ordinary painting. Every vestment 
is of one color, a red alongside of blue, a bright green 
alongside of a pale purple, an embroidery of gold placed 
on a dark amaranth, like the simple, sustained strains 
of an angelic melody. The painter delights in this ; he 
cannot find colors for his saints pure enough or orna- 
ments for them of sufficient precioiisness. He forgets 
that his figures are images ; he bestows upon them the 
faithful care of a believer, of a worshipper ; he embroi- 
ders their robes as if they were real ; he covers their 
mantles with filagree as fine as the finest work of the 
goldsmith ; he paints on their copes small and perfect 
pictures ; he applies himself to delicately unfolding 
their beautiful light tresses, to arranging their curls, to 
the proper adjustment of the folds of their tunics, to an 
accurate delineation of the round monastic tonsure ; he 
enters into heaven with them in order to love and to 
serve them. Era Angelico is the last of the mystic 



CELESTIAL TYPES. 



137 



flowers. The society that surrounded him and of which 
he knew nothing, ended in taking an opposite direction, 
and, after a short respite of enthusiasm, proceeded to 
burn his successor, a Dominican like himself and the 
last of the christians, Savonarola. 



CHAPTER Y. 

THE UFFIZJ COLLECTION.— THE TRIBUNE.— ANTIQUES, AND RENAIS- 
SANCE SCULPTURE.— DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GREEK ART AND 
THE ART OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.— MICHAEL ANGELO.— THE 
MEDICI CHAPEL, 

What can be said of a gallery containing thirteen 
hundred pictures ? For my own part I abstain. Exam- 
ine catalogues and collections of engTayings, or rather 
come here yourself. The impressions borne away from 
these gTand storehouses are too diverse and too numer- 
ous to be transmitted by the pen. Observe this, that 
the Uffizj is a universal depot, a sort of Louvre con- 
taining paintings of all times and schools, bronzes, 
statues, sculptures, antique and modern terra-cottas, 
cabinets of gems, an Etruscan museum, artists' por- 
traits painted by themselves, twenty-eight thousand 
original drawings, four thousand cameos and ivories 
and eighty thousand medals. One resorts to it as to a 
library ; it is an abridgment and a specimen of every- 
thing. Add to this that one goes also to other places, 
to the Palazzo-Yecchio, to the Palazzo Corsini, to the 
Palazzo Pitti. A mass of notes accumulate, but I can 
extract nothing from them. It seems to me that I have 
completed and corrected or modified some former ideas ; 
but completions, corrections and modifications are not 
to be transcribed. 

The simplest thing, therefore, is to leave study there 
and promenade for pleasure. We ascend the great 
marble staircase, pass the famous antique boar and 
enter the long horseshoe corridor filled with busts and 
tapestried with paintings. Visitors, about ten o'clock 
in the morning, are few ; the mute custodians remain 
in their corners ; you seem to be really at home. It 



THE UFFIZJ GALLERY. 139 

all belongs to you, and what convenient possessions ! 
Keepers and majordomos are here to keep things in 
order, well dusted and intact : it is not even necessary 
to give orders ; matters go on of themselves without 
jar or confusion, nobody giving himself the slightest 
concern ; it is an ideal world such as it ought to be. 
The light is excellent ; bright gleams from the windows 
fall on some distant white statues, on the rosy torso 
of a woman which comes out living from the shadowy 
obscurity. Beyond, as far as the eye can see, marble 
gods and emperors extend away in files up to the win- 
dows through which flickers the light ripple of the 
Arno with the silver}^ swell of its crests and eddies. 
You enter into the freedom and sweet repose of ab- 
stract life ; the will relaxes, the inner tumult subsides ; 
one feels himseK becoming a monk, a modern monk. 
Here, as formerly in the cloisters, the tender inward 
spirit, chafed by the necessities of action, insensibly 
revives in order to commune with beings emancipated 
from life's obligations. It is so sweet no longer to be ! 
Not to be is so natural ! And how peaceful the realm 
of human forms withdrawn from human conflict ! The 
pure thought which follows them is conscious that its 
illusion is transient : it participates in their incorporeal 
serenity, and reverie, lingering in turn over their vo- 
luptuousness and violence, brings back to it plenitude 
without satiety. 

On the left of the corridors open the cabinets of 
precious things, — the Niobe hall, that of portraits, that 
of modern bronzes, each with its special group of treas- 
ures. You feel that you have a right to enter, that great 
men are awaiting you. A selection is made amongst 
them ; you re-enter the Tribune : five antique statues 
form a circle here, — a slave sharpening his knife ; two 
interlocked wrestlers whose muscles are strained and 
expanded ; a charming Apollo of sixteen years whose 
compact form has all the suppleness of the freshest 



140 THE FLOBENTINE SCHOOL OF AKT. 

adolescence ; an admirable Faun instinct with tlie ani- 
mality of his species, unconsciously joyous and dan- 
cing with all his might ; and, finally, the " Yenus de 
Medici," a slender young girl with a small delicate 
head, not a goddess like her sister of Milo, but a per- 
fect mortal and the work of some Praxiteles fond of 
hefairce, at ease in a nude state and free from that some- 
what mawkish delicacy and bashful coquetry which its 
copies, and the restored arms with their thin fingers by 
Bernini, seem to impose on her. She is, perhaps, a 
copy of that Yenus of Cnidus of which Lucian relates 
an interesting story ; you imagine while looking at her, 
the youths' kisses pressed on the marble lips, and the 
exclamations of Charicles who, on seeing it, declared 
Mars to be the most fortunate of gods. Around the 
statues, on the eight sides of the wall, hang the mas- 
terpieces of the leading painters. There is the " Ma- 
donna of the Goldfinch" by Raphael, pure and candid, 
like an angel whose soul is a bud not yet in bloom ; 
his " St. John," nude, a fine youthful form of fourteen, 
healthy and vigorous, in which the purest paganism 
lives over again ; and especially a superb head of a 
crowned female, radiant as a summer noonday, with 
fixed and earnest gaze, her complexion of that power- 
ful southern carnation which the emotions do not 
change, where the blood does not pulsate convulsively 
and to which passion only adds a warmer glow, a sort 
of Eoman muse in whom will still prevails over intel- 
lect, and whose vivacious energy reveals itself in repose 
as well as in action.^ In one corner a tall cavalier by 
Yan Dyck, in black and with a broad frill, seems as 
grandly and gloriously proud in character as in propor- 
tions, primarily through a well-fed body and next 
through the undisputed possession of authority and 



* This picture is called " the Fornarina." It is not however the 
Fomarina, and it is not certain that Raphael painted it. 



Titian's venus. 141 

command. Tliree steps more and we come to the 
"Fliglit into Egypt," by Correggio, the Virgin with a 
charming spirited face wholly suffused with inward 
light in which the purity, archness, gentleness and 
wildness of a young girl combine to shed the tenderest 
grace and impart the most fascinating allurements. 
Alongside of this a "Sibyl" by Guercino, with her 
carefully adjusted coiffure and drapery, is the most 
spiritual and refined of sentimental poetesses. 

I pass twenty others in order to reserve the last look 
for Titian's two Yenuses. One, facing the door, re- i^ 
clines on a red velvet mantle, an ample vigorous torso 
as powerful as one of Eubens' Bacchantes, but firmer — 
an energetic and vulgar figure, a simple, strong unin- 
tellectual courtezan. She Ues extended on her back, 
caressing a Uttle cupid naked like herself, with the va- 
cant seriousness and passivity of soul of an animal in 
repose and expectant. The other, called " Venus with 
the Dog," is a patrician's mistress, couched, adorned 
and ready. We recognize a palace of the day, the 
alcove fitted up and colors tastefully and magnificently 
contrasted for the pleasure of the eye ; in the back- 
ground are servants arranging clothes ; through a win- 
dow a section of blue landscape is visible ; the master 
is about to arrive. Nowadays w^e devour pleasure 
secretly Hke stolen fruit ; then it was served up on gold- 
en salvers and people sat down to it at a table. It is 
because pleasure was not vile or bestial. This woman 
holding a bouquet in her hand in this grand columnar 
saloon has not the vapid smile or the wanton and mali- 
cious air of an adventuress about to commit a bad 
action. The calm of evening enters the palace through 
noble architectural openings. Under the pale green of 
the curtains hes the figure on a white sheet, slightly 
flushed with the regular pulsation of life, and devel- 
oping the harmony of her undulating forms. The head 
is small and placid ; the soul does not rise above the 



! 



142 THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. 

corporeal instincts ; hence she can resign herself to 
them without shame, while the poesy of art, luxury and 
security on all sides comes to decorate and embellish 
them. She is* a courtezan, but also a lady ; in those 
days the former did not efface the latter ; one was as 
much a title as the other and, probably, in demeanor, 
affection and intellect one was as good as the other. 
The celebrated Imperia had her tomb in the church of 
San Gregorio, at Eome, with this inscription : " Impe- 
ria, a Eoman courtezan worthy of so great a name, fur- 
nished an example to men of perfect beauty, lived 
twenty-six years and twelve days, and died in 1511, 
August 25." Two centuries after this President De 
Brosses, at Venice, on being directed to a certain ad- 
dress found a lady so noble in her manner, so dignified 
in her bearing and so refined in her language that he 
stammered out an apology ; he was about to -withdraw, 
aghast at his mistake, when she smiled and bade him 
be seated. 

On passing from the Italian into the Flemish galle- 
ries one is completely turned around : here are paint- 
ings executed for merchants content to remain quietly 
at home eating good dinners and speculating over the 
profits of their business ; moreover in rainy and muddy 
countries dress has to be cared for, and by the women 
more than the men. The mind feels itself contracted 
on entering the circle of this well-to-do domestic life ; 
such is the impression of Corinne when from liberal 
Italy she passes to rigid and dreary Scotland. And 
yet there is a certain picture, a large landscape by Rem- 
brandt, which equals and surpasses all ; a dark sky 
bursting with showers amongst flocks of screaming 
crows ; beneath, is an infinite stretch of country as des- 
olate as a cemetery ; on the right a mass of barren 
rocks of so mournful and lugubrious a tint as to attain 
to the sublime in effect. So is it with an andante of 
Beethoven after an ItaHan Opera. 



GREEK REPOSE. 



143 



April 14. — The TJffizj. — A visit to tlie antiques and 
sculptures of the renaissance. The relationship of 
the two ages is immediately recognized. Both are 
equally pagan, that is to say wholly occupied with the 
present and physical life. Notwithstanding this they 
are separated by tw^o notable differences ; the antique 
is more calm, and, on coming down to the best period of 
Greek sculpture this calmness is extraordinary ; it is 
that of animal life, almost vegetative ; man lives for 
the sake of living and desires nothing beyond. We 
find in him, indeed, at the first aspect, an apathetic air, 
or at least dull, approaching melancholy, in contrast 
with the constant feverishness and profound elabora- 
tion of modern heads. 

The renaissance sculptor, on the other hand, imi- 
tates the real more subtly, and aims more at expression. 
Contemplate the statues of Yerocchio, of Francavilla, 
of Bandinelli, of Cellini, and especially those of Dona- 
tello. His "St. John the Baptist," emaciated by fast- 
ing, is a skeleton. His "David," so elegant, so well 
posed, has angular elbows and arms of extreme meagre- 
ness ; individual character, passionate emotion, par- 
ticular situation, intense aylU and originahty peer out 
strongly in their works as in a portrait. They appre- 
ciate animation more than harmony. 

Hence it is, in sculpture at least, that the only mas- 
ters who perfectly present the sentiment of beauty are 
the Greeks. After them all is deviation ; no other art 
has been able to put the soul of the spectator in so just 
an equilibrium. This is apparent on strolling an hour 
through this long gallery. The mind is suddenly tran- 
quillized ; it seems to have recovered its firmness. The 
heads of empresses are rapidly passed, almost all spoiled 
by an overloaded and pretentious coiffure ; a glance 
is bestowed on the busts of the emperors, interesting to 
a historian and each of which is the summary of a reign 
and a character ; but one stops before the statues of 



144 



THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. 



athletes, of the " Discobulus," of the small " Bac- 
chante," and especially of the gods, " Mercury," " Ye- 
nus " and the two ApoUos. Muscles are obliterated ; 
the trunk is prolonged without depressions or projec- 
tions into the arms and thighs ; there is no ef- 
fort. How strange this term in our world where one 
encounters nothing but effort ! The reason is that, since 
the Greeks, man, in developing himself, has become 
distorted ; he has become distorted all on one side 
through the predominance of cerebral activity. Nowa- 
days he desires too much, he aims too high and has 
too much to do. In those days after a youth had 
exercised in the gymnasium, when he had learned 
a few hymns and could read Homer, when he had list- 
ened to orators in the agora and to philosophers in the 
portico, his education was finished ; the man was ac- 
complished and he began life complete. A rich young 
Englishman of to-day, of good family and calm in blood, 
who has rowed, boxed and raced a good deal, who pos- 
sesses healthy and precise ideas, who deliberately lives 
in the country, is, in these days, the least imperfect imi- 
tation of the young Athenian ; he often possesses the 
same unity of feature and the same tranquil regard. 
But this does not last long. He is forced to imbibe too 
much knowledge, and too positive knowledge : lan- 
guages, geography, political economy, Greek verses at 
Eton, mathematics at Cambridge, newspaper statistics 
and documents, besides the Bible and ethics. Our civ- 
iHzation overwhelms us ; man staggers under the pres- 
sure of his ever-increasing task ; the burden of inven- 
tions and ideas which he easily bore in infancy is no 
longer proportioned to his strength. He is obliged to 
shut himself up in a little province and become special. 
One development excludes others ; he must be either 
laborer or student, politician or philosopher, manufac- 
turer or man of family and confine himself to one thing 
at the expense of all the rest ; he would be inadequate 



THE SPIPJT OF MODERN AET. 145 

were lie not mutilated. Hence tlie loss in liim of calm- 
ness, and the loss in art of harmony. The sculptor, 
hov/ever, no longer addresses himself to a religious civic 
community, but to a crowd of isolated amateurs ; he 
ceases to act in the capacity of priest and of citizen, and 
is only a man and an artist. He dwells on the anatomi- 
cal details that are to arrest connoisseurs, and on the 
exaggerated expression which is comprehended by the 
ignorant. He is a sort of expert goldsmith desirous of 
gaining and of retaining pubhc attention. He executes 
simply a work of art and not a work of national art. 
The spectator pays him in praise and he pays the spec- 
tator by pleasing him. Compare the " Mercury" of John 
of Bologna with the young Greek athlete near him. 
The former, springing on his toe is a tour deforce which 
is to do honor to the artist, and prove an attractive 
spectacle to fix the eyes of visitors. The young Athe- 
nian, on the contrary, who says nothing, who does noth- 
ing, who is contented to live, is an effigy of the city, a 
monument of its Olympic victories, an example for all the 
youths of its gymnasia ; he is of service to education 
as the statue of a god is of service to religion. Neither 
the god nor the athlete need be interesting ; it suf- 
fices for them to be perfect and tranquil ; they are not 
objects of luxury, but instruments of public welfare ; 
they are commemorative objects and not pieces of fur- 
niture. People respect and profit by them ; they do not 
use them for their diversion nor as material for criticism. 
Likewise, again, the marble " David" of Donatello, so 
proudly erect, draped in so original a manner, so 
haughtily grave, is not a hero or a legendary saint, but 
a pure creation of the imagination ; the artist fashions 
a pagan or a christian according to order and his sole 
concern is to please people of taste. Consider, at last, 
Michael Angelo himself, his " Dead Adonis" with head 
inclined upon his bent arm, and the " Bacchus" who 
raises his cup and half opens his mouth as if to drink a 

6 



146 



THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. 



health — two admirable figures, so natural and almost 
antique. "With him, however, as with his contempora- 
ries, action and interest predominate ; he, no more than 
they, contents himself with representing a simple exist- 
ence calm in its own repose. Through this great trans- 
formation of human life, thus disjointed and dissevered 
in its various organs, the ideal model, public sentiment 
and the artistic spirit have radically changed, and 
that which henceforth the new art typifies is individual 
personality, striking peculiarities, uncontrollable pas- 
sion, diversities of action, instead of the abstract type, 
of the general form, of harmony and of repose. 

We follow out this idea and leave the Uffizj to see 
other statues. "We enter the Palazzo-Yecchio. Its 
court is supported by columns entirely covered with 
ornamentation and with small figures, the rich and 
brilliant invention of the renaissance. In the middle 
of the court stands a fountain the perfection of ele- 
gance, (this term always recurs to one in Florence,) 
and, erect on its top, Yerocchio has placed a charming, 
animated statue of a child in bronze. You ascend to 
the great Council-chamber painted by Yasari with 
large, insipid frescoes ; and around it you see a range 
of marble statues, the " Adam" and " Eve" of Bandi- 
nelli, both of them meagre and real ; " Yirtue triumph- 
ant over Yice," by John of Bologna, a grand, sensual 
imperious fellow, entirely nude, with a singularly dis- 
torted thigh ; a youthful victor standing over a pris- 
oner, by Michael Angelo, with an elongated body and 
a very small head, two traits which his school is to 
copy literally, and finally exaggerate. The same char- 
acter reappears everywhere, that of beauty centred in 
exact imitation or in modifications of expression ; it is, 
however, a new field on which a whole world may be 
built. 

In order to comprehend this it is necessary to visit 
the church of San Lorenzo, filled with the works of 



THE MEDICI CHAPEL. 



147 



Donatello, Verocchio and Michael Angelo. The church 
is by Briinelleschi and the chapel by Michael Angelo, 
one being a sort of temple with a flat ceiling sustained 
by Corinthian columns, and the other a square structure 
surmounted by a cupola, the former being too classic 
and the latter too cold ; — one hesitates before writing 
these two words ; and yet nothing must be kept back 
even in the presence of such great names. The two 
pulpits however, by Donatello, the bronze bas-reliefs 
which cover the marble, so many natural and impas- 
sioned little figures, and especially the frieze of nude 
cherubs playing and running along the cornice, and the 
charming balcony above the organ so delicately wrought 
that it seems to be of ivory, with its niches, shells, col- 
umns, animals and foliage — how graceful and what 
taste ! And what ornamentalists they were, these re- 
naissance sculptors ! Thereupon you enter the Medici 
chapel and contemplate the colossal figures which 
Michael Angelo has placed on their tombs. Nothing 
in modern statuary is equal to them, and the noblest 
antique figures are not superior; they are different, 
which is all one can say. Phidias executed serene 
gods and Michael Angelo suffering heroes ; but suffering 
heroes are equal to serene gods ; it is the same 
magnanimity, here exposed to the miseries of the 
world, there emancipated from the miseries of the 
world ; the sea is as grand in tempest as in repose. 

Every one ha-s seen a drawing or a plaster cast of 
these statues ; but, unless on this spot, no one has 
seen their soul. It is essential to have felt, almost 
through contact with them, the colossal and superhu- 
man massiveness of these grand elongated forms whose 
muscles speak to you ; the hopeless nudity of these 
virgins of which we see only the spirit, the grief and the 
race, without the mind of itself being capable of enter- 
taining any other sentiment but fear and compassion. 
Their blood is different from ours ; a fallen Diana, cap- 



148 THE FLOEENTINE SCHOOL OE AET. 

tive in the hands of the barbarians of the Taurica, 
would possess this visage and this form. 

One of them, h9;lf-reclining, awakes and seems to be 
shaking off a fearful dream. The head is bowed, the 
brow frowning, the eyes hollow, and the cheeks ema- 
ciated. How much misery had to be endured in order 
that such a form might feel the burden of life ! Its 
indestructible beauty has not succumbed, and yet in- 
ward suffering begins to reveal its corroding imprint. 
The superb animal vitality, the vivacious energy of the 
trunk and Hmbs are intact, but the spirit falters ; she 
lifts herself painfully on an arm, and beholds the light 
with regret. How sad to raise the eyehds, and to feel 
that once more must be borne the burden of a human 
day! 

By her side a man, seated, turns half round with a 
sombre air like one overcome, irritable and expectant. 
What an effort, and what writhing when the mass of 
muscles furrowing this torso swells and strains in order 
to clutch an enemy 1 On the other tomb an unfinished 
captive, his head half disengaged from its stone ma- 
trix, the arms rigid, the body contorted, raises his shoul- 
der with a formidable gesture. I see there all of 
Dante's figures, Ugolino gnawing the skull of his 
enemy, the damned half springing from their flaming 
sepulchres ; but these are not the cursed ; they are 
grand wounded spirits justly indignant at slavery. 

A grand female form extended is sleeping ; an owl 
in front of it is placed at its feet. This is the sleep 
of exhaustion, the dull lethargy of an overtaxed being 
who has sunk down and rests inert. It is called Night, 
and Michael Angelo has written on the pedestal, " Sleep 
is sweet, and yet more sweet is it to be of stone while 
misery and wrong endure. Not to see, not to feel, is 
my joy. So wake me not ! Ah, speak in whispers !" 
These lines are not necessary to make the sentiment 
which guided his hand understood ; his statues tell their 



MICHAEL ANGELO'S FIGURES. 1^9 

own story. His own Florence had just been van- 
quisliecl; in vain had he fortified and defended it; 
after a siege of a year Pope Clement had captured it. 
The last free government was destroyed. Mercenaries 
broke into the houses killing its best citizens. Four 
hundred and sixty emigres were condemned to death 
as outlaws, or read proclamations throughout Italy 
fixing a price on their heads. They had ransacked 
Michael Angelo's dwelling in order to seize and carry 
him aw^ay ; had not a friend concealed him he too 
would have perished. He had passed long days con- 
fined in this asylum, knowing that death was taking 
the noblest lives and hovering around his own. If the 
Pope afterward spared him it was only through family 
interest, and in order that he might finish the Medici 
chapel. He shut himself up in it ; he devoted himself 
to it passionately ; he tried to forget in it, in intellectual 
strife and in weariness of hand, the ruin of vanquished 
liberty, the agony of a down-trodden country, the de- 
feat of outraged justice, the tumult of suppressed re- 
sentments, of his impotent despair and of his devour- 
ing humiliations, and it is this indomitable rebellion of 
his soul, sternly confronting oppression and servitude, 
wdiich he has here put into his heroes and his virgins. 
Above them, the mute Lorenzo, silent and tragic be- 
neath his warrior's casque, with his hand on his lip, is 
about to arise. A king sits in this attitude when, in the 
midst of his army, he orders the execution of some 
judicial act like the destruction of a city. Frederic 
Barbarossa must have appeared thus when he caused 
Milan to be ploughed up. 

Near the door is an admirable Yirgin, unfinished, 
supporting her child on her hip ; her tall draped form 
is of wonderful nobleness ; she leans over and her hol- 
low flank makes a peculiar curve following the folds of 
her robe ; her thin face wears an expression of benev- 
olent sadness. Like her reclining sisters she is of a 



150 THE FLOEENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. 

more suffering and more exalted race than the human 
race ; all are beings disproportioned to things below, 
bruised and tempfest-tossed in life's career, encounter- 
ing at long intervals respites of calm and of sublime 
reverie. 

Between his tranquil " Pieta" of St. Peter's at Rome 
and this grandiose Virgin with such a subtle and mel- 
ancholy spirit, what a distance ! Add to these the 
" Moses" and the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. How 
the man has grown and suffered ! How he has formed 
and revealed his original conception of life ! This is 
modern art, wholly personal and manifesting the indi- 
vidual, the artist himself, in opposition to antique art 
which is wholly impersonal and unfolding a general 
idea expressive of the city. One finds the same differ- 
ence between Homer and Dante, between Sophocles and 
Shakespeare ; Art becomes more and more a confession, 
that of an individual soul, expressing itself and reveal- 
ing itself fully to a dispersed and indefinite assembly 
of other souls. Thus was Beethoven, the most mod- 
ern and grandest of all musicians. — The consequence 
is that an artist must be a personality; if not, he 
has nothing to say. An Italian remarked to me at 
Sienna ; " Formerly artists painted with the passions 
they had ; now they paint those they think they have. 
This is why after having given us men they now give 
us phantoms of men." 



CHAPTEE VL 

THE PITTI PALACE.— THE MEDICI MONARCHY.-MANNERS AND CUS- 
TOMS OF THE COURT.— PROMENADES AlVIONG THE PAINTERS.— 
ANDREA DEL SARTO AND ERA BARTOLOMEO.-THE SPIRIT AND 
INFLU'ENCE OF FLORENCE IN ITALY. 

I DOUBT if there is a palace in Europe more monu- 
mental than the Pitti Palace. I have not seen one that 
leaves such a simple, grandiose impression. Placed 
on an eminence its entire outline appears in profile 
against the clear blue sky, its three distinct stories 
superposed one above the other like three regular 
blocks, the narroAvest on the top of the broadest. Two 
terraces project crosswise on the two flanks adding to 
it another mass. But wdiat is really unique and carries 
to an extreme the grandiose serenity of the edifice is 
the vastness of the material of which it is built. It is 
not stone, but fragments of rock and almost sections 
of mountains. Some blocks, especially those support- 
ing the terraces, are as long as five men. Scarcely 
hewn out, rugged and dark, they preserve their original 
asperity, as would a mountain if torn from its founda- 
tions, broken into fragments and erected on a new site 
by Cyclopean hands. 

There is no ornamentation on the facade ; a long 
balustrade simply runs along the top, intersecting the 
motionless azure. Colossal round arcades support the 
windows, and each of their vertebrae forms a projection 
with its primitive irregularities, as if the skeleton of an 
old giant. 

Inside is a square court like that of the Farnese pal- 
ace, surrounded by four architectural masses as austere 
and as vast as the exterior. Here also ornament is 



152 THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. 

wanting, and designedly. The entire decoration con- 
sists of a lining of doric columns upon whicli are ionic 
columns and, over these, corinthian columns. But 
these piles of round blocks, rising one above another 
or alternating with square blocks equal, in the force of 
their massiveness and the sharpness of their angles, 
the ruggedness and energy of the rest. Stone reigns 
supreme here ; the eye seeks for nothing beyond vari- 
ety of reliefs and substantial position ; it seems as if it 
subsisted in and for itself, as if art and man's will had 
not intervened and as if there were no room for fancy. 
On the ground-floor, stout, resistant doric pillars bear 
arcades forming a promenade ; and each curve, brist- 
ling with its bosses, seems to be the joint of an antedi- 
luvian spine. A brown tint like that of a crag corroded 
by time, renders the huge edifice sombre from top to 
bottom, extending even to the rude chequered flagging 
of the court, enclosed within this accumulation of stones. 
A Florentine trader built this palace in the fifteenth 
century and thereby ruined liimseK. Brunelleschi made 
the plan, and, fortunately, his successors who completed 
the structure, did not modify its character. If a.nj- 
thing can give an idea of the grandeur, severity and 
audacity of intellect which the middle ages bequeathed 
to the free citizens of the renaissance it is the aspect 
of such a dwelling built by a single individual for his 
own use, and the contrast of its internal magnificence 
with its external simplicit}^ The Medicis, become ab- 
solute princes, bought the palace in the sixteenth cen- 
tury and decorated it as princes. It contains ^Ye hun- 
dred pictures, all selected among the best, and several 
are masterpieces. They do not form a musee according 
to schools or centuries, as in our great modern collec- 
tions, to serve the purposes of study or of history and 
provide documents for a democracy which recognizes 
science as its guide and instruction as its support ; they 
decorate the saloons of a royal palace, wherein the 



TEAITS OF THE MEDICI FAMILY. 153 

prince receives his courtiers and displays liis luxurions- 
ness by festivities. The age of creators is replaced by 
the age of connoisseurs, and the pomp of golden vest-- 
ments, the gravity of Spanish etiquette, the gallantry of 
recent sigisbeism the diplomacy of official intercourse 
and the license and refinements of monarchical habits 
and tastes display themselves alongside of the noble 
forms and hving flesh of paintings, before golden ara- 
besques on the walls and a sumptuous array of furniture 
by which the prince manifests and maintains his rank 
and figure. Pietro di Cortona, Fedi and Marini, the last 
of the painters of the decadence, cover the ceilings with 
allegories in honor of this reigning family. Here is 
Minerva rescuing Cosmo I. from Yenus and presenting 
him to Hercules, the type of great works and heroic 
exploits ; he in fact, put to death or proscribed the 
leading citizens of Florence, and he it is who said of a 
refractory city that he " would rather depopulate it 
than lose it." Elsewhere, Glory and Virtue are leading 
him to Apollo, the patron of arts and letters ; he, in 
fact, furnished magnificent apartments and pensioned 
the writers of sonnets. Farther on, Jupiter and the en- 
tire Olympian gToup are all astir to receive him ; he, in 
fact, poisoned his daughter, caused his daughter's lover 
to be killed and slew his son who had slain a brother ; 
the second daughter was stabbed by her husband, and 
the mother died on account of it ; these operations re- 
commence in the following generation : assassinations 
and poisonings are hereditary in this family. But the 
tables of malachite and of pietra dura are so beautiful ! 
The ivory cabinets, the mosaic furniture, the cups with 
dragon handles are in such exquisite taste ! Wliat 
court better enjoys works of art and knows better how 
to give fetes ? What is there more brilliant, what more 
ingenious than the mythological representations in 
honor of the marriage of Francis di Medici with the 
famous Bianco Capello and of Cosmo di Medici with 



154 THE FLOKENTINE SCHOOL OF AKT. 

Mary Magdalen of Austria ?* What retreat could be 
better for academicians who purify language and com- 
pose dedications,, for poets who turn compliments and 
point concetti? Obsequious politeness flourishes here 
with its magniloquence, literary purism with its scru- 
ples, contemptuous dilettantism with its refinements, 
sensuality in satisfied indifference, while " the most il- 
lustrious, most accomplished, most perfect gentleman," 
becomes the cicerone of Europe, explains with a com- 
placent smile to harharians from the North,t " the vir- 
tue" of his painters and " the bravery" of his sculptors. 
There are too many of them, — I have to say the same 
as at the Uffizj, come and see them. Five or six pictures 
by Eaphael stand out from the rest : one is that 
Madonna which the Grand Duke took with him on his 
travels ; she is standing in a red robe and with a long 
green veil, the simplicity of the color heightening the 
simplicity of the attitude. A small diaphanous white 
veil covers the fine blonde hair up to the edge of the 
brow ; the eyes are lowered and the complexion is of ex- 
treme purity ; a delicate tint like that of the wild-rose 
tinges the cheeks and the small mouth is closed ; she 
has the calmness and innocence of a German virgin. 
Eaphael here is still of the school of Perugino. — An- 
other picture, " The Madonna della Seggiola" forms a 
striking contrast to this. She is a beautiful Grecian or 
Circassian Sultana ; her head is covered with a sort of 
turban while striped oriental stuffs of bright colors and 
embroidered with gold wind around her form ; she 
bends over her child with the beautiful action of a wild 
animal and her clear eyes, without thought, look you 
full in the face. Raphael here has become the pagan 
and only thinks of the beauty of physical being and 
the embellishment of the human figure. — Tou recog- 



* Nozze di Fiorenza, (witli engravings.) 
f Milton's Travels in Italy. 



RAPHAEL. 155 

nize this in the "Yision of Ezekiel," a small canvas a 
foot high but of the grandest character. Jehovah, 
who appears in a whirlwind, is a Jupiter with nude 
breast, muscular arms and a royal bearing, and the 
angels around him have such chubby bodies as to be 
almost fat. None of the fury or delirium of the He- 
brew seer subsists here ; the aDgels are joyous, the 
grouping harmonious and the coloring healthy and beau- 
tiful ; this vision which, with the prophet makes the 
teeth clatter and the flesh creep, with the painter only 
elevates and fortifies the soul. That which we find 
with him throughout is perfection in the proportionate."^ 
All his personages, whether christian or pagan, are in 
equilibrium and at peace with themselves and with all the 
world. They appear to dwell in the azure as he 
himself lived in it, admired fi'om the start, beloved 
by everybody, exempt from crosses, amorous without 
phrensy, laboring without restlessness and, in this con- 
stant serenity, occupied in obtaining a rounded arm 
and a doubling thigh for an infant, a small ear and 
curHng tresses for a woman, searching, purifying, dis- 
covering and beaming as if only attentive to the music 
within his own breast. On this account he only feebly 
affects the spmts of those who know no repose. 

Hence it is that subtle and impassioned painters, those 
that wield their art with some grand motive, according 
to a special and dominant instinct, please me more. 
Portraits, from this point of view, impress me more 
than all the rest, because they fully bring out peculiari- 
ties of individual character. One of these, attributed 
to Leonardo da Yinci, is called " The Nun." A white 
veil like a wimple, rests on the head ; the breast, bare 
midway down the bosom, swells superbly passionless 
above a black velvet robe. The face is colorless, ex- 

* The original is la perfection dans la mesure. The meaning I be- 
lieve is, perfect parts in perfect relationship. — Tr. 



15^ THE FLOEENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. 

cepting the powerful and strange red lips, and the whole 
physiognomy is calm with a slight expression of dis- 
quietude. This, is not an abstract being, emanating 
from the painter's brain, but an actual woman who has 
lived, a sister of Mona Lisa, as complex, as full of 
inward contrasts, and as inexplicable. Is she a nun, 
a princess, or a courtezan ? Perhaps all three at once, 
like that Yirginia de Leyva whose history has just 
been exhumed. With the deadened pallor of the 
cloister she has the splendid nudity of the outward 
world, and the carnation of the lips on the impassible 
pale face seems like a scarlet flower blooming on a 
sepulchre. It is a soul, a dangerous, unfathomable 
soul, slumbering or watchful, within that marble breast. 
In this domain the "Venetians are the greatest mas- 
ters, and Titian is of the highest rank. Eaphael's por- 
traits (of which there are five here) teU me less ; he gives 
the essential of the type, simply, soberly and broadly, but, 
not like the former, the profound moral expression, the 
mobile physiognomy, the personal originality utterly in- 
finite, the entire inner nature of a man. Titian has 
here eight or ten portraits, — Andrea Yesale the anato- 
mist, Aretino, Luigi Cornaro, Cardinal Hippolyte di 
Medici in the costume of a Hungarian magnate, all 
of them full of life, with a look strange, disquieting 
and uneasy but passive ; — Philip II. of Spain standing 
in an official costume, with slashed breeches and hose 
reaching to the middle of the thigh, a wan, cool-blooded 
being with projecting jaw, seeming to be abortive, dis- 
proportioned, incomplete, and steeped in birth and eti- 
quette ; but especially a Venetian patrician whose name 
is not known, one of the greatest masterpieces I am 
familiar with. He is about thirty-five years old, in 
black, pale, and with an intense look. The face is 
slightly emaciated, the eyes are pale blue, and a deli- 
cate moustache connects with a thin beard ; he is of a 
noble race, and of high rank, but his enjoyment of 



THE CHAKMS OF VENETIAN ART. 157 

life Las been less than that of a common laborer ; 
accusations, anxieties and the sentiment of danger 
have wasted and undermined him with secret and in- 
cessant usury. It is an energetic, worn, and meditative 
brain, used to sudden resolves at critical turns of life, 
and glows in its surroundings of sombre hues hke a 
lamp gleaming in an atmosphere of death. 

Sometimes truthfulness is so vivid that the painter, 
without knowing it, reaches the superlatively comic. 
Such is the portrait which Veronese has painted of his 
wife. She is forty-eight years old, double-chinned, has 
the air of a court dowager and the coiffure of a poodle- 
dog ; with her black-velvet robe cut low and square on 
the neck in a fi-amework of lace she looks pompous 
enough and proud of her charms ; she is a well-pre- 
served ample figure, well-displayed, majestic and good- 
natured, her ruddy flesh, perfect contentment and 
general roundness suggesting a fine turkey ready for 
the spit. 

It is hard to leave these Venetians, the deep blue of 
their landscape, their luminous nudities in w^arm shad- 
ows, their rotund shoulders enveloped in palpable 
atmosphere, quivering flesh blooming like conseiwatory 
flowers, the changeable folds of lustrous stuffs, the 
proud bearing of venerable men in their simarres, the 
voluptuous elegance of female lineaments, the force of 
expression of structure and of embrace with which 
contorted or erect bodies display the opulence of theii' 
vigor and the vitality of theu^ blood. A Giorgone por- 
trays a nymph chased by a satyr, — how can wofds 
render the enjoyment of the eye and the power of 
tones ? All is bathed in shadow,* but the ardent motion- 
less face, lovely shoulder, and bosom all issue forth like 
an apparition ; one must see the living flesh emerging 
from the deep shadow, and the intense splendor of 
scarlet tones in deep and bright gradation from the 
blackness of night to the radiance of open day. Facing 



158 THE FLOEENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. 

this, a Cleopatra by Giiido, pearly gray on a light 
slaty background, is nothing but a dull phantom, the 
vanishing form of a sentimental young damsel. — Equally 
animated as the' nymph of Giorgone is the woman en- 
titled " Titian's mistress," in a blue robe embroidered 
with gold and slashed with violet velvet. Her auburn 
tresses of a clear blonde glow amidst light scattered 
curls ; her lovely hands, of an exquisitely refined flesh 
tone, are in repose, because her toilet is complete, 
while her head, that of a gay young girl, happy in her 
splendid attire, is enlivened by a scarcely perceptible 
half-malicious smile. She resembles the " Yenus with 
the Dog." If she is the same person, draped here and 
undraped there, one can comprehend how painter, pa- 
trician and poet lost themselves in such felicity ; the 
heart and the senses are all absorbed ; such a woman 
according to attitude and toilette, combined in herself 
fifty other women. No soul, indeed, was required ; all 
that was requisite were joyousness, beauty and adorn- 
ment. Read in Aretinos' letters the description of his 
own, and of other households in Venice. 

But I must stop short. I have done wrong to let my 
own taste divert me ; I ought to have confined myself 
to the Florentine painters. Of these there are two, 
Andrea del Sarto and Fra Bartolomeo, whom we scarcely 
know at home, and who have reached the summit of 
their art through their elevation of type, beauty of 
composition, simplicity of process, harmony of draper- 
ies and tranquillity of expression. Perhaps in these 
a^^rage, complete geniuses one obtains the most accu- 
rate and purest idea of the art and of the taste of 
Florence. There are sixteen large paintings by Andrea 
del Sarto in the Pitti Palace, others in the Corsini Pal- 
ace and in the Uffizj gallery, and frescoes, still finer, in 
the portico of the Servites. There are five large works 
by Fra Bartolomeo in the Pitti Palace and especially 
a colossal " St. Mark," less spirited and impetuous but 



FEA BAPtTOLOMEO. 159 

as grave and as grand as the Prophets of Michael 
Angelo ; others in the Uffizj and, finally, an admirable 
"St. Vincent" in the Academy. This monk is the most 
religious of the painters who have been complete mas- 
ters of form ; none have so perfected the alliance be- 
tween Christian purity and pagan beauty ; this same 
man designed his Madonnas nude before applying the 
color in order to secure a veritable and perfect body 
beneath the falling drapery f and he became a Domin- 
ican after the death of Savonarola in order to secure 
salvation ; a strange union of apparently contradictory 
actions, and which mark a unique moment in history ; 
that in which new paganism and old Christianity, meet- 
ing without struggle and uniting without distinctiveness, 
permit art to worship sensuous beauty and to exalt 
physical life, with the single condition that it shall only 
prize nobleness and only portray the serious. With 
moderate, attenuated and always sober coloring, with a 
dominant taste for pure drawing, with exquisite propor- 
tion, balance and finesse of faculties and instincts, 
the Florentines have shown themselves better adapted 
than others to fulfil this task. Italian art centred in 
Florence as formerly Grecian art in Athens. As form- 
erly in Greece other cities were inadequate or eccentric. 
As formerly in Greece other developments remained 
local or temporary, and like the Athens of former days, 
Florence directed or rallied them around herself. As 
formerly with Athens she maintained her supremacy 
until the decadence. Through Bronzino, Pontormo, 
the Allori, Cigoli, Dolci and Pietro da Cortona, through 
its language and academies, through Galileo and Fili- 
caja, through its savants and poets and, at length, later 
through the tolerance of its masters and the spirit of 
its resurrection, she remained in Italy the capital of the 
mind. 

* See the collection of original drawings in tlie Uffizj. 



BOOK W. 



FROM FLORENCE TO YENICE. 



CHAPTEE I. 



FKOM FLORENCE TO BOLOGNA— THE APENNINES— BOLOGNA— STREETS 
AND FIGURES— WOMEN AND THE YOUNG— LOVE— SAN DOMENICO— 
THE TOMB OF SAN DOMENICO— SAN PETRONIO— JACOPO DELLA 
QUERCIA— JOHN OF BOLOGNA— END OF THE RENAISSANCE. 

From Florence to Bologna, April 17. — A more beauti- 
ful or more fertile country could not be imagined. 
After leaving Pistoija tlie mountains commence ; from 
hill to hill, then from crag to crag, the carriage slowly 
ascends for two hours over a zigzag road, and from 
the bottom to the top all is cultivated and inhabited. 
At each turn of the road, we see houses and gardens, 
terraces of olive-trees, fields sustained by walls, fruit- 
trees sheltered in the hollows, bits of green meadow and, 
everywhere, sparkling streams. Women on their knees 
are washing clothes at the mouths of bubbling foun- 
tains, or in the little wooden conduits that distribute 
freshness and moisture to the surrounding declivities. 
As far as the eye can reach, both valleys and eleva- 
tions bear the marks of labor and of human prosperity. 
Everything is turned to account ; chestnut-trees cover 
the sharp points and the steep portions of the soil. 
The mountain is like one enormous terrace of multi- 
plied grades expressly arranged for diverse species of 
culture. Even on the summit, in the vicinity of snow, 
small terraces about six feet wide furnish grazing for 
the flocks. Signs of this industry and prosperity are as 



DANTEAN SCENERY. IGl 

visible among the inhabitants as upon the soil; the 
peasantry wear shoes and the women, while tending their 
flocks or walking, are braiding straw. The houses are 
in good condition and the villages are numerous and 
provided with communal schools and, on the summit of 
the Apennines, is a cafe bearing the name of the moun- 
tain range. This is truly the heart of Italy ; in genius, 
power of invention, prosperity, beauty and salubrity, 
Florence surpasses Rome, and against foreign invasion 
this barrier of mountains would be a defence. 

The other slope forms a second barrier; the Apen- 
nines with its bastions is as broad as it is high ; on the 
descent the road winds among little wooded gorges 
trickling with water, all green beneath their ruddy 
vesture of woods framed in by the sober forms of bare 
rocks. Night comes on, and the railroad buries itself 
in the defiles of a new mountain : a fantastic, horrible, 
devastated landscape Hke those of Dante : mountains 
shattered, rocks broken, long subterranean passages 
wherein the roaring machine plunges as into a vortex, 
and dismantled valleys no longer anything but a skele- 
ton ; the torrent rushes almost under the wheels of the 
carriages and great slides of gravel suddenly appear, 
whitened in the bright moonlight. In this desert, 
amidst beds of boulders accumulated during the winter, 
and in the recesses of a sepulchral gorge is occasionally 
seen a thorny tree like a spectre in its crypt, and when 
the train stops, all that the ear catches is the roar of 
the icy water falling over naked stones. 

Bologna, April 17. — Bologna is a city of arcades ; they 
extend on both sides of the principal streets. It is 
quite pleasant to walk under them in summer in the 
shade, and, in winter, protected from the rain. Almost 
all of the Italian cities have thus some special contri- 
vance or construction adding to the conveniences of 
life and of service to everybody. Only in Italy do 
people reaUy and universally comprehend the agi-ee- 



163 



FROM FLORENCE TO VENICE. 



able ; for the reason, perhaps, that everyboclj has need 
of it and aspires to it. 

That which strikes one among the young men here, 
as in Florence arid elsewhere, that which is noticeable 
in the faces at the theatre, on our promenades and in 
the streets is a certain amorous air, a gracious smile 
and tender and expansive ways; nothing is there of 
French hardness or irony. They utter the terms 6e??a, 
veggosa, vaga, leggiadra, with a peculiar accent like that 
of Don Ottavio in Mozart or of the young tenors of the 
Italian Opera. On the stage in Florence the tenor 
kneeling to Marguerite was inconsistent but he per- 
fectly expressed that state of mind. For the same 
reason people dress in light colors pleasing to the eye 
and wear rings and heavy gold chaias ; their hair is 
glossy and there is something blooming and brilliant 
throughout their persons. 

As to the women, the bold and dark eye, their deep 
black hair audaciously knotted or massed in lustrous 
plaits, the vigorously defined forms of cheek and chin, 
the brow often square, the large and well-set visage 
below it and the solid boniness of the skull forestall 
any appearance of gentleness or delicacy and, gener- 
ally, even any air of nobleness and purity. To make 
amends the structure and expression of their features 
denote energy, brilliancy, gay self-confidence, a posi- 
tive and clear intellect, and talent and will to turn life 
to the best account. On looking in the windows of the 
bookstores at the figures provided by the makers of 
political caricatures for Italy and its provinces, we re- 
cognize this very character; although goddesses and 
allegorical goddesses, their heads are short and round, 
and grossly gay and sensual. Nothing can be more 
significant than these popular personages and these 
recognized types. By way of contrast look at the mild 
English female of " Punch," with long curls, and bran- 
new frocks ; or the Frenchwoman of Marcelin, coquet- 



ITALL\N WOiyrEN. 163 

tisb, sprightly, and extravagant, or the candid, honest, 
primitive German woman, somewhat stupid, of the 
" Kladderadatsch" and the minor journals of Berlin. I 
have just strolled through the streets of Bologna ; it is 
nine o'clock in the morning ; out of four women there 
are always three of them frizzled and nearly in full 
dress ; theu' keen eye boldly fixes itself on the passers- 
by ; they go bareheaded, some of them merely letting a 
black veil hang down over their shoulders ; their hair 
swells out superbly on both sides of the head ; they 
seem to be equipped for conquest ; nobody could im- 
agine a more naturally triumphant physiognomy, an 
air more like that of a prima-donna in the clouds. 
With a character hke this, the spirit and the imagina- 
tion of men, they must control. 

What can be done at a table-d'hote if not to look 
about one ? In this forced silence and society the brain 
and eyes are both busy. The lady facing me is the wife 
of a major on garrison duty in the Abruzzi, beautiful 
although mature, gay, prompt, self-confident, and what 
a tongue ! Northern and Southern Europe, the latin 
and the germanic races are a thousand leagues apart in 
this facility of expression, in bold judgment and in 
promptitude of action. She argues and decides every- 
thing — the indolence of the Abruzzi peasantry, their 
vendetfe, the embarrassments of the government, her 
dog, her husband, the officers of the battalion, "our fine 
regiment, the 27th." She addresses me and then turns 
to her neighbor, an ecclesiastic, who, Uke the rest, has 
the same Italian air, that is to say he is gallant and 
obsequiously polite. Her sentences flow out with the 
velocity and sonorousness of an inexhaustible torrent. 
Day before yesterday, another, about forty-eight, in a 
black spencer puffed with ribbons, and with a red face, 
entirely absorbed the conversation and made the apart- 
ment ring with her tattle and exclamations. The other 
day a pretty little hourgeoise became indisposed in the 



164 FKOM FLOKENCE TO VENICE. 

diligence inUrieure, and lier liusband had her removed 
up to the imperiale by our side. She questioned us all, 
and corrected m;^ errors of pronunciation ; after having 
two or three times in succession misplaced an accent 
or not having caught the precise tone, she became im- 
patient and gave me a scolding. She informs us that 
she is just married, that she and her husband hadn't a 
cent with which to begin housekeeping, etc. ; there are 
three men alongside of her and she it is who takes and 
keeps the lead. I have in my mind fifty others, all of 
whom may be grouped around these three types. The 
dominant trait is a vivacity and a clearness of concep- 
tion boldly exploding the moment it is bom. Their 
ideas are all cut out at sharp angles ; she is the 
Frenchwoman, more vigorous and less fine ; like the 
latter, and more than the latter, she is self-willed ; she 
makes of herself a centre ; she does not await direction 
from another, she takes the initiative. There is noth- 
ing in her of the mild, the timid, the modest or the re- 
served, no capacity for burying herself in her house- 
hold with her children and husband in germanic 
fashion. I involuntarily compare , her with the Eng- 
lish women who are present. Some there are very 
peculiar, puritanic at heart, rigid in morality, the fruit 
of mechanical principles, one especially, in her straw- 
hat like an extinguisher, a genuine spinster in embryo, 
without toilet, grace, smile or sex, always silent or, 
when she speaks, as keen as a knife-blade. She belongs, 
without doubt, to that species of young lady who is 
found ascending the White Nile alone with her mother, 
or clambering up Mount Blanc at four in the morning 
tied to two guides by a rope, her dress converted into 
trowsers and striding along over the glaciers. In that 
country artificial selection has produced sheep espe- 
cially for meat, and natural selection, women especially 
for action. But the same force has operated more 
frequently in another sense ; the despotic energy of 



ITAUAN ENTHUSIASM. 165 

the man, and tlie necessity of a tranquil home to the 
overworked daily laborer have developed in the woman 
qualities belonging to the ancient germanic stock, 
namely a capacity for subordination and respect, 
timorous reserve, aptitudes for domestic life, and the 
sentiment of duty. She remains, accordingly, the 
young girl even into matrimony ; on being spoken to she 
blushes ; if, w^ith all possible precaution and circum- 
spection, one tries to draw her out of the silence in 
which she is immured she expresses her sentiments 
with extreme modesty and immediately relapses. She 
is immeasurably removed from any aspirations of com- 
mand, of taking the initiative, of independence even. 
In all the English couples I have recently met the man 
is chief ; in every ItaHan couple it is the woman. 

x^d this is not very surprising. People here seem 
to be lovers naturally and organically. The drivers 
and conductors of the diligences talk about nothing 
else. Before a woman, as in the presence of every 
beautiful or brilliant object, they leap at a single bound 
to admiration and enthusiasm. quanto heUa ! Twenty 
times a day I hear these earnest and emphatic expres- 
sions. They resemble actors and exaggerating mimics. 
BeUo, hello, hellissimo loalazzo ! La cMesa e mognifica, 
stupenda, tutti di marmo, tutti di mosaica ! Their eyes 
ensnare and their senses transport them. The more 
the diverse races are studied the more do aptitudes for 
enjoyment appear unequal. Some are scarcely moved 
to pleasure ; others are transported and overcome by 
it. Enjoyment, with some, resembles the taste of a 
flavorless apple ; with others the melting and delicious 
savor of clusters of golden grapes. With some the 
ejffect of external objects is an almost uniform series of 
moderate sensations ; with others it is a tumultuous 
contrast of extreme emotions. Hence the ordinary 
current of life is changed ; in every breast the charm 
is proportioned to the degree of enjoyment. I might 



166 FEOM FLORENCE TO VENICE. 

give, in this connection, two or three stories, and es- 
pecially one, worthy of Bandello and Pecorone : I was 
a confidant, and almost an eye-witness, in a small 
town ; — but such 'stories are to be told and not written ; 
the French language allows no expansion of simple 
nude instinct ; that which is beautiful it pronounces 
crudity. Here they are more tolerant ; they are ad- 
dicted to espionage, it is true, as in our provincial 
towns, but society is content to laugh ; it does not ex- 
clude lovers, and is not prudish. 

Bologna, Apil 17. — The churches are ordinary, in- 
complete or modernized ; but the sculptures are strik- 
ing. 

The most precious are in San Domenico, on the 
tomb of Saint Dominic decorated in 1231 by the re- 
storer of art, Nicholas of Pisa. This is the first of the 
monuments displaying the renaissance of beauty in 
Italy. Bear in mind that at this period the ascetic 
spirit through the Dominicans and Franciscans, gained 
fresh energy ; that gothic art ruled throughout Europe ; 
that it crossed the Alps and built Assisi. Just at the 
height of this mystic fever, and on the marble tomb of 
the first inquisitor, a statuary revives the virile beauty 
of pagan forms. None of his figures are morbid, ex- 
alted or emaciated ; on the contrary all are robust, 
healthy and oftentimes joyous. If they have any de- 
fect it is excess of vigor. Ordinarily their cheeks are 
too full, the head too massive and the body, overstout, 
is too heavy. The grand Yirgin in the centre has the 
satisfied serenity of a good and happy mother of a 
family ; her bambino is chubby and is growing finely. 
A mother, w^hose son has been killed by his horse and 
who is restored to life, shows the liveliest expression of 
joy. Several figures of young girls, and one in par- 
ticular on the extreme left of the fagade, seem to 
be vigorous, blooming Greek caryatides. The most 
ascetic personages are transformed in this artist's 



SAN DOMENICO. 167 

hands ; numbers of the big hooded monks' heads are 
real and humorous ; the dominant traits of all these 
figures are placidity, solidity and good-humor. This 
beautiful marble procession thus turns around the 
panels of the tomb, and the statuettes decorating the 
capitals, executed b}^ Niccolo dell' Area, two centuries 
later, only repeat with a greater degree of skilfulness 
the same firm and free conception ; two youths espe- 
cially, one in a coat of mail and the other booted like 
the archangels of Perugino, have an admirable spirited 
attitude. This shrine lacks nothing of the combina- 
tion in a few square feet of the entu'e development of 
sculpture. A kneeling angel on the left, noble and 
serene, and a St. Petronius, grandiose and severe, 
holding the city in his hand, were chiselled by Mi- 
chael Angelo, and from the first to the last matter, all 
the works are of the same family, pagan, energetic and 
well proportioned. — If now we promenade through the 
church we will see that in this gTeat period of three 
centuries the primitive idea did not falter. A tomb of 
Taddeo Pepoli in 1337, substantial and beautiful, dis- 
plays no gothic finery ; on the two sides two standing 
saints, tranquil and in large mantles, regard a kneeling 
figure offering them a small chapel. — Farther on the 
monument of Alexander Tartegno, in 1477, in an 
arched niche decked with flow^ers, fruits, animals' heads 
and small corinthian columns, shows, above the re- 
cumbent body, three Yirtues T\dth full and cheerful 
countenances in richly carved drapery and in a studied 
and expressive attitude. These are the complicated 
groupings, the minghngs of ideas through which, in the 
fifteenth century, the renaissance commences ; but, 
among the various turns of thought, the sculptor has 
preserved the same race of body imprinted on his 
memory, and it is always the sentiment of the human 
framework, the solid muscularity and the natural and 
nude life which have guided him. 



168 FKOM FLOKEXCE TO VENICE. 

This great city is dull and miserable. Several quar- 
ters seem to be deserted ; vagabonds are playing and 
wrangling in the open spaces. Numbers of stately 
mansions seem gloomy like the houses of our provin- 
cial towns. It was, in fact, a provincial city governed 
by a pope's legate ; from an active republic it was con- 
verted into a city of the dead. — The best cafe is 
pointed out to us and we leave it as soon as possible ; 
it is simply a grog-shop. We stop for a moment be- 
fore two leaning towers, square and curious, built in 
the twelfth century, and which have none of the 
elegance of that of Pisa. We reach the principal 
church, San Petronio, an ogival basilica with a dome 
of the Italian gothic and of an inferior species : the 
mind dwells with regret on the fine monuments of Pisa, 
of Sienna, and of Florence ; a republican government 
and a free creative energy did not last long enough 
here to allow the edifice to be completed. The build- 
ing is cut in two, and is half -finished ; the interior is 
whitewashed; three quarters of the windows have 
been closed up and the fagade is incomplete. In the 
dim light which the too few windows allow to enter 
there are some good sculptures perceptible; "Adam 
and Eve" by Alfonso Lombardi, and an "Annuncia- 
tion," — but one has not the courage to look at them, as 
the eye is saddened. We go out, and from the dilapi- 
dated steps, gaze on a dirty square with its beggars, 
and a crowd of idle vagabonds. We retrace our steps 
in order to obtain relief and suddenly get interested. 
Over the central door is a cordon of superb figures, 
grand and vigorous nude bodies, pagan in action and 
in shape, an admirable new-born Eve, another Eve 
spinning while Adam ploughs, Adam reaching up to 
pluck the apple with a gesture of vigorous vitality. 
They are by Jacopo della Quercia, who executed them 
in 1425, at the same time that Ghiberti chased the 
gates of the Baptistery; but Ghiberti anticipated 



FOUNTAIN BY JOHN OF BOLOGNA. 1G9 

Raphael, and Querela seems to have been the pre- 
cursor of Michael Angelo. 

This is reyiying, and we proceed to a fountain that 
we discover on the left. Here the renaissance and pa- 
ganism reach their extreme point. On the summit is 
a superb Neptune, in bronze, by John of Bologna 
(1568) and not an antique god, calm and worthy of 
adoration, but a mythological god serving as an orna- 
ment, naked and displaying his muscles. On the four 
comers of the basin four children, joyous and well 
posed, are seizing so many leaping dolphins; under the 
feet of the god are four females with fishes' legs dis- 
playing the magnificent nudity of their bending forms, 
the open sensuality of their bold heads and closely 
clasping their swollen breasts to force out the jutting 
water. 



CHAPTEE II. 

THE PINACOTHECA.— EAPHAEL'S ST. CECILIA.— THE CARACCI.— STATE 
OF SOCIETY AND OF ART DURING THE CATHOLIC RESTORATION.— 
DOMENICHINO, ALBANO AND GUtDO. 

Haying once made a tour of the Musee, one immedi- 
ately feels himself led, re-led to, and arrested before 
the principal picture, the " Saint Cecilia," by Kaphael. 
She is standing, surrounded by four personages also 
standing, and overhead in the sky are angels singing 
from a music-book ; this is all. The painter evidently 
does not aim at variety of attitude, nor at dramatic 
interest ; there is no elaboration or effects of color ; a 
reddish tone of admirable force and simplicity prevails 
throughout the painting. All the merit lies in the 
species and quality of the figures ; color, drapery, ac- 
tion and the rest are there, like a grave sober accompa- 
niment, which serves only to secure the solidity of the 
body and the nobleness of the type. 

How define this type ? The saint is neither angelic 
nor ecstatic ; she is a vigorous, healthy, well-developed 
girl, of rich warm blood, and gilded by the Italian sun- 
shine with glowing and beautiful color. On her left 
another young girl, less robust and more youthful, has 
more innocence, but her purity is yet only passivity. 
To my mind, however innocent and chaste they may 
be they are less so through temperament than through 
their youth ; their placid minds are not yet disturbed, 
their tranquillity is that of ignorance. And, as with 
Baphael, we have to go in quest of our comparisons to 
the summit of the ideal, I will say for myself that but 
two types surpass his, one that of the Greek goddesses, 
and the other that of certain young girls of the north. 



171 

With tlie same perfection of organization and tlie same 
soul-serenitj they yet possess something more, the for- 
mer the sovereign pride of aristocratic races and the 
latter the sovereign purity of the spirituahstic tempera- 
ment. 

One readily sees here the exact moment in art which 
this painting represents. These five standing figures, no 
more than those of Perugino opposite to them, are not 
aUied to each other, and impelled by a common impulse ; 
each figiu'e exists for itself ; the composition is as simple 
as possible, almost primitive ; it is an ecclesiastical pic- 
ture and not a parlor decoration ; it has been commis- 
sioned by some devout old lady and ministers to piety 
more than to pleasure. But again the personages are 
not as stiff as those of Perugino ; their immobility 
does not interdict action. They are robust, muscular 
and broadly draped ; beautiful, free, composed, like 
antique figures. The painter enjoys the unique ad- 
vantage of standing between a Christianity that is de- 
clining and a paganism that is becoming triumphant, 
between Perugino and Julio Romano. In every cycle 
of development there is one fortunate moment, and 
one alone ; Raphael benefited by one of these Hke 
Phidias, Plato and Sophocles. 

What a distance between this St. Cecilia and the pic- 
tures of his master Perugino, and of his friend Francia 
whom he begged to correct his work ! There are six 
of Francia's near it, — benevolent Madonnas copied 
from life ; a little less precise and dry than those of 
Perugino, but always instinct with literal art and the 
hard hand of the goldsmith. How expanded, noble 
and free everything becomes in the hands of the youth- 
ful painter ! And how comprehensible are the admir- 
ing shouts of Italy ! 

He has a bad effect upon his successors, the Bolo- 
gnese, who fill this gallery. On passing from a picture 
by Raphael to one of their works it seems like going 



172 FROM FLORENCE TO VENICE. 

from a simple writer to a rhetorician. They aim at 
effects, and are extravagant ; they no longer know how 
to use language correctly; they force or falsify the sense 
of terms ; they' refine or exaggerate, their ambitious 
style contrasting with their feeble conceptions and 
their negligent diction. And yet they are zealous labor- 
ers, so many restorers of the language. Compared 
with the Vasaris, Sabbatinis, Passerottis and Procacin- 
nis, to their predecessors and rivals, to the degenerate 
disciples of the great masters, they are painstaking 
and moderate. They are not disposed to paint con- 
ventionally, according to prescription like some of 
their contemporaries, who, expeditious artists, gloried 
in executing figures fifty feet high, in turning out half 
a mile of painting per diem, painting even with both 
hands, forgetful of nature and deriving everything 
from their own genius, heaping together incredible mus- 
cles, extraordinary foreshortenings, theatrical attitudes 
on a grand scale and treating all with the indifference 
of a manufacturer and a charlatan. They stem this 
tide ; they study the old masters, remain poor and un- 
employed a long time, and, finally, open a school. Here 
they labor and neglect nothing in order to become 
instructed in every department of their art. They 
copy living heads and draw from the nude model ; casts 
from the antique, medals and original drawings by the 
masters supply them with examples. They acquire a 
knowledge of anatomy from corpses and of mythology 
from books. They teach architecture and perspec- 
tive ; they discuss and compare the processes of an- 
cient and modern masters ; they observe the transfor- 
mation of features through which a virile trait is con- 
verted into a feminine trait, an inanimate form into a 
human form, a tragic attitude into a comic attitude. 
They become learned, even erudite, eclectic and system- 
atic. They fix principles and devise canons for painters 
as the Alexandrians formerly did for orators and for 



THE CARACCI. l'^3 

poets. They recommend " the drawing of the Roman 
school, the action and shadows of the Venetians, the 
beautiful color of Lombardy, the terrible style of 
Michael Angelo, the truth and naturalness of Titian, 
the pure and masterly taste of Correggio, the dignity 
and solidity of Pellegrini the creativeness of the wise 
Primaticcio and a little of the grace of Parmegiano."^" 
They lay up stores and exercise themselves. Let us 
see what fruit this patient culture is going to produce. 

There are thirteen large pictures here by Ludovico 
Caracci, and among them, a " Nativity of St. John the 
Baptist" and a " Transfiguration on Mount Tabor." 
Few personages can be imagined more declamatory 
than the three figures of the apostles, half thrown back- 
ward and especially the one with a naked shoulder ; 
they are colossi, too rapidly executed and are without 
substance or solidity. — His nephew, Augustino, is a 
better painter, and his " Communion of St. Jerome" 
furnished the principal points for a similar picture by 
Domenichino ; nevertheless, like his uncle he subordi- 
nates the essential to the accessory, truth to effect, 
forms and tones to action and expression. — The second 
nephew, Annibale Caracci, is the cleverest of all. 
Two of his pictures, representing the Virgin in her 
glory, conform to the sentimental piety of the age ; 
his chiaroscuro and the multitude of tints fused into 
each other cater to the ambiguous emotions of effemi- 
nate devotion. His St. John designating the Virgin 
resembles an amoroso ; near him a man kneeling, with 
a large black beard, expresses his emotion with a com- 
placent tenderness not exempt from insipidity. The 
Virgin on her throne, the two saints male and female 
that accompany her, bend over with languishing grace. 
That beautiful saint herself in a pale violet robe, with 
parted fingers and plump hands, that Virgin with her 

* From a sonuet by Augustiuo Caracci. 



174 



FROM FLOEENCE TO VENICE. 



amiable dreamy air, are half-amorous and half-mjstic 
ladies. Seek for the sentiment which the art restored 
by the Caracci serves to manifest, and there it is. In 
Italy, toward the end of the sixteenth century the 
character of man becomes transformed. The terrible 
shocks and infinite ravages of foreign invasion, the ruin 
of the free republics and the establishment of suspicious 
tyrannies, the irremediable oppression of a rigorous 
Spanish rule, the catholic restoration under the Jesuits, 
the ascendency of bigoted popes and inquisitors, the 
persecution of free thinkers and the organization of 
clerical government snapped the spring of the human 
will ; society relaxes and grows enervated ; people get 
to be epicurean and hypocritical, and confess themselves 
and make love. How great the distance between the 
geniality, light careless fancy and naturally healthy 
sensuality of Ariosto, and the forced phantasmagoria, 
the morbid voluptuous derangement, the chivalry and 
operatic piety found fifty years afterward in Tasso ! 
And poor Tasso is denounced as impious ! He is com- 
pelled to recast his crusade, to prune his love scenes, 
to exalt his characters, to transform them into allego- 
ries. Man has become effeminate and perverted ; pow- 
erful and pure ideas no longer please him, but a 
medley of refinements, conceits and graduated senti- 
ments compounded of pleasure and asceticism, alter- 
nating betwixt the stage and the church, the crucifix 
and the alcove. The same smile in this epoch rests 
alike on the lips of saints and of goddesses ; the nudity 
of christian Madonnas is as attractively displayed as 
that of pagan Yenuses, the cavalier beholding his mis- 
tress decked, smiling and with open arms on the gild- 
ing of his chapel as upon that of his own palace. 
Love itself is transformed ; it is no longer frank and 
intense ; Kaphael's Fornarina to them would seem 
simply a sound well-conditioned body ; they would 
prefer in her more affecting and more complex charms. 



SENTIMENTAL ART. 175 

more delicate and more intoxicating seductions, a mel- 
anclioly and mystic sweetness, the vague and winning 
grace of dreamy abandonment, moistened or ravished 
eyes ' interrogating space, soft forms melting away in 
the obscurity of shadows, draperies folded or displayed 
with studied ingenuity in the languor of artificial light 
or in the magic of chiaroscuro. They crave affecta- 
tion and elaboration as their predecessors craved force 
and simplicity ; on all sides, among the divergencies of 
the schools, with Baroche, Cigoli and Dolci, as with 
the Caracci, Domenichino, Guido, Guercino and Al- 
bano, we see a style of painting appear corresjoonding 
to the sugared beauties of the prevailing poesy to 
the new sigisbeism just introduced and to the opera 
about to commence. 

When the soul has become enervated it demands 
powerful emotions ; over-refinement leads to violence, 
and the nerves which, habituated to action have lost 
their stable balance, exact, after the tickling of delicate 
sensations, the uproar of extreme sentiments. Hence 
the extravagance of this sentimental art. The faithful 
have to be revived here by the pale face of a corpse, 
there by a butchery of martyrs, and there again by 
grossly coarse figures in contrast with those of an ex- 
quisitely celestial type ; and always through the use of 
excessive gestures, imposing attitudes, a multitude of 
characters and dramatic effects. In this direction the 
Bolognese squander their talent and their art. A large 
work by Domenichino, " Our Lady of the Eosary," 
unites and masses together four or five tragic episodes 
aiming to show the efficacy of the sacred rosary : two 
females in mutual embrace and whom a cavalier tries 
to pierce with his lance, a soldier attempting to stab a 
shouting woman, a hermit dying on his straw pallet, a 
bishop in his cope supplicating Our Lady, all accu- 
mulated together in one frame; frightened or weeping 
figures, melodramatic executioners, pity, terror and 



176 



FROM FLOEENCE TO VENICE. 



curiositj appealed to capriciously and without stint ^ 
above all tliis, a shower of flowers and falling chaplets, 
and the Madonna surrounded by frolicsome or tearful 
angels bearing the crown of thorns with the cross, 
Saint Veronica's handkerchief, and other insignia of 
mechanical devotion ; and, in the uppermost regions, 
the little Jesus holding up, as if in triumph, a bouquet 
of roses. Such is the piety of the day, as I have seen 
it in Eome in the Jesuits' churches, a grand-orchestra 
piety, aiming at conquering its public by dint of the 
pleasing and by excitations. — His celebrated " Martyr- 
dom of St. Agnes" is in the same taste. In the fore- 
ground lies a heap of corpses, the mouth of one opened 
by his last cry, a horror-stricken woman thrown back- 
ward with a theatrical air and her infant concealing 
itself in her robe. The saint meanwhile on her block, 
pale, her eyes upturned to heaven, stretches out her 
neck while a lamb, the symbol of her meekness, tries to 
draw near and hck her feet. Behind her is the execu- 
tioner with his skull illuminated and his face in shadow 
all red and brown, the strength of the color and the 
ferocity of his visage setting off the pallor and gentle- 
ness of his victim ; he has a narrow hard head and is 
an excellent executioner, studious to strike his blade 
home. At the top appears a choir of noisy angels, 
while Christ bends forward with an interested air to 
take the crown and the palm-branch which an angel, a 
genuine domestic, respectfully offers to him. And yet 
it is full of talent ; this work abounds with richness, 
truth and expression. Domenichino is a true artist ; 
he felt, studied, dared and found. Although born in 
a time when types were prescribed and classified he 
was original ; he reverted back to observation and dis- 
covered a hitherto unknown part of human nature. In 
his " Peter of Yerona" the fright of the saint, his 
wrinkled and contracted brow, the crisped hands ex- 
tended to ward off the blow, the terrified face of the 



ALBANO AND GUERCINO. 177 

other monk who runs off raising his arms in despair 
mingled with horror, every attitude and every physiog- 
nomy in the picture are new creations ; here, for the 
first time, is the full, hopeless expression of passion ; 
the terror, even, is so true that both the heads approach 
the grotesque. Domenichino is never afraid of vul- 
garity. He sets out fi'om the real, from the object 
see?i ; the contrast between his classic education and 
his native sincerity, between what he knows and what 
he feels is certainly a strange one. 

Almost all the painters of this school are here repre- 
sented. There are three of the principal works of 
Albano, all of a reHgious character, but equally as sen- 
timental as his pagan pictures. For example, in his 
" Baptism of Christ" the angels are gallant pages of 
good birth ; of all the masters he is perhaps the one 
who best expresses the taste of this epoch, affected and 
insipid, fond of sentimental nudities and gay mythologi- 
cal subjects. — Five or six pictures by Guercino with 
cadaverous tones and powerful effects of shadows, are 
striking but inferior to those I saw at Eome. Th ose 
of Guido, on the contrary, are superior. I was only 
familiar with his productions in his second manner, 
almost all of them being gray, pale, formless and 
without substance, produced quickly and according to 
prescription, simple agreeable contours of easy, worldly 
elegance but without embodying a substantial animated 
figure , He possessed however, a fine genius, and if his 
character had equalled his talent he would have been 
qualified to attain to the first rank in his art. Here, 
in the freshness and vigor of early inspiration he is 
tragic and grand. He has not yet fallen into a faded, 
bleached style of coloring ; he feels the dramatic power 
of tones, and all that strong contrasts and the lugubri- 
ous moumfulness of mingled dark tints speak to the 
heart of man. Around his Christ on the cross and the 
weeping saints about him the sky is nebulous, almost 

8* 



178 



FEOM FLOEENCE TO YENICE. 



black and overcast witli storm-clouds, tlie personages 
standing in these vast floating draperies — St. Joiin in 
his enormous red mantle, his hands clasped in despair, 
the Magdalen at the foot of the cross streaming with 
hair and falling drapery, the Virgin in her monrnfnl 
blue robe enveloped in an ashy mantle, — all this suffer- 
ing choir, forming, through its color and masses, a sort 
of grandiose, clamorous declamation which ascends up- 
ward to heaven. Still more grandiose is the tragedy 
entitled " Our Lady of Pity," and which covers an en- 
tire panel of the wall. Five colossal figures, the pro- 
tecting saints of Bologna, in large damascene copes, 
earthy-hued monks' frocks and warriors' coats, appear 
together, and behind them, in the distance, you can dis- 
tinguish the obscure forms of bastions and the towers 
of the city over which their protection extends. Above 
them, as if in an upper story of the celestial world, a 
dead Christ between two weeping angels, displays his 
livid pallor ; still higher, at the summit of the mystic 
region, a grand mournful Virgin enveloped in blue dra- 
pery, finds in her own grief more profound compassion 
for human miseries. This is a chapel background; 
purer and more christian subjects were executed in the 
times of perfect and primitive piety ; but for the exci- 
ted piety of subsequent eras, for a catholic and an epi- 
curean city suddenly swept by pestilence and bowed 
down by great anguish there is no painting more appro- 
priate or more affecting. 



CHAPTEE III. 

FROM BOLOGNA TO RAVENNA.— LANDSCAPE.— -PEASANTRY.— THE 
TOMB OF THEODORIC— RAVENNA. -BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE.— 
SAN APOLLLNARE AND ITS MOSAICS. 

April 18. — This country seems to be made for the de- 
light of a northern man, for eyes which satiated with 
too distinct forms and wearied with too bright light, 
gladly repose on a hazy indefinite horizon covered with 
a vapory atmosphere. It has rained ; heavy dark 
clouds sleep quietly overhead, and, near the horizon, 
almost drag along the ground. Sometimes, the white 
back of a cloud exposes its satin lustre in the midst 
of the pale mist ; an invisible sun warms the banks of 
vapor, while, here and there, scattered rays peer out 
like a diamond brooch from soft gray gauze. Toward 
the east extends an infinite flat plain. Its myriads of 
trees form in the distance at the edge of the sky a pro- 
digious spider's web of innumerable thin and mingled 
threads. Their tops still brown are wedded to the 
young spring verdure, to willows, budding poplars, and 
the bright green grain. The earth has imbibed largely ; 
the water glistens in the furrows, ditches and lagunes, 
and league after league, both right and left, the eye 
always falls on the tilled fields, and interminable rows 
of elms between which, travelling from trunk to trunk, 
are interlaced the tortuous stems of the vines. 

I enter into conversation with an ecclesiastic of the 
country, and formerly a director in a college. The 
clergy here support the Pope on principle ; but all the 
bourgeoisie, every partially educated person, the larger 
portion of the nobility, even at Kavenna where aris- 
tocratic pride runs so high, are for the new order 
of things. 



180 



FROM FLOEEXCE TO YEXICE. 



Mj ecclesiastical friend is liberal, strongly commends 
tlie schools and army which are the two latest great 
institutions. According to him " character in this coun- 
try is naturally very violent ; people resort to the sti- 
letto instanter ; (Lord Byron in his letters calls them 
superb two-legged tigers.) On receiving an insult they 
conceal themselves at night and kill the offender. 
Nothing can be more serviceable to such people than 
schools ; instruction, reflection and reason are the sole 
counterpoises to instinct and temperament. As to the 
army, not only is it a school of obedience and honor 
but again an ulcerous issue ; nothing could be more 
pertinent here than the proverb, oziosi^ viziosi ; exces- 
sive ferocity must be utilized against enemies instead 
of being criminally expended on neighbors ; many en- 
ergetic men who would have been private malefactors 
are thus converted into public protectors. The refrac- 
tory, however, are not numerous ; their numbers dimin- 
ish annually. In the beginning the unknown, and 
transplantation frightened them ; since that time the 
narratives of their comrades have reassured them, and 
a brilliant uniform begins to entice them. Another 
wholesome influence is the severity of the tribunals ; 
assassinations are less frequent since convicts have 
ceased to be pardoned at the* end of six months. The 
important thing in this country is to bridle the passions 
which are quite savage and the new regime labors in 
this direction." 

It is now clear to me that the promoters and sup- 
porters of the revolution throughout Italy are the en- 
hghtened and intelligent among the middle and bour- 
geois class ; and that the difficulty lies in winning over 
and civilizing or itahanizing the people. Lord Byron 
in 1820, at Eavenna, already states that the instructed 
alone are liberal, and that, in the projected insurrection, 
the peasantry would not rise. 

The train stops, and, at a quarter of a league from 



EAYENNA. 181 

the city a round low dome appears between the green 
tops of the poplars ; this is the Tomb of Theodoric. 
Its columns plunge down into a morass ; its doors are 
falling, rotted by dampness ; the stones of the rotunda 
seem to have been knocked away by blows from a 
hammer. The enormous cupola, one single mass 
thirty-four feet in diameter, has been riven by Hght- 
ning. There is nothing in the interior save one altar 
and the names of witless travellers and stupid inscrip- 
tions written in lead-pencil on the dripping walls. The 
sarcophagus in which the body reposed has been re- 
moved ; the old king was driven out of his sepulchre at 
the same time as his Gothic subjects from their domain, 
and only croaking frogs are heard in the stagnant pool 
filling the empty crypt. 

On returning to Ravenna the spectacle is still more 
melancholy. One cannot imagine a more deserted, 
more miserably provincial, more fallen city. Tlie 
streets are deserts ; a few sharp stones serve as a pave- 
ment ; a foul gutter runs midway through them ; 
there are no palaces or shops. Two fa9ades of public 
edifices, well scraped, the Academy and the theatre, are 
all that stand out in bold relief against this desolation 
through their cleanliness and commonplace character. 
You perceive old, rusty and dilapidated towers, the re- 
mains of ancient structures adapted to new uses, small 
white columns inserted in one of Theodoric's walls and 
plenty of nooks and corners for the populace. What 
could poor Byron accompHsh here, even with his Count- 
ess Guiccioli? Sombre dramas, conspiracies, Byron- 
ism. The city has been dead for I know not how many 
centuries. The sea has receded ; it is the last station 
of the Roman empire, a sort of stranded waif which, 
when Byzantium withdrew, she abandoned on the 
strand. This city, on this rarely-visited, unhealthy 
coast could not revive in the middle ages like those of 
Tuscany. Even to-day it is still Byzantine, and more 



183 PROM FLORENCE TO YENICE. 

desolate than a ruin because corruption is worse than 
extinction. A canal leads to the sea, and on its sleepy 
waters a few boats are seen and four or five sailing-craft. 
The only beautiful object about the city is a forest of 
pines which has taken root between it and the brackish 
waves, and whose distant tops like so many dark circles 
form a bar on the line of the horizon. 

Ravenna. — Travellers who have visited the Orient 
say that Ravenna is more Byzantine than Constanti- 
nople itself. A city like this is unique ; what can be 
more strange than this Byzantine world ? We are not 
sufficiently familiar with it; we have a collection of 
dull chroniclers and Gibbon, who gives of it a very fair 
idea ; but the distance is infinite between mere ideas 
and a complete, colored image. What a spectacle, 
that of a world in which antique civilization drags 
along for a thousand years and ends under a perverted 
Christianity and among oriental importations ! Nothing 
like it can be found in history ; it is a unique moment 
of the human soul and culture. We have a good 
knowledge of the origins, growth and perfection of va- 
rious peoples, and even of partial declines like those of 
Italy and Spain ; but a degeneracy so long and compli- 
cated, a gigantic mouldering away of a thousand years 
in a closed retort, aggravated by the fermentations of 
so many and such opposite species, is without example. 
There are two civilizations, both of them resembling 
the immense ulcers, swellings and deformities of hu- 
manity, which I would like to see narrated, not by an 
antiquary but by an artist, those of Alexandria and 
Byzantium. Add to these India and China, when the 
archaeological soil shaU have been well ploughed up by 
the erudites. 

The first church you encounter, San Apollinare, is a 
large gable-shaped facade, furnished with a portico 
that supports arcades resting on columns. The nave 
still retains the form of the latin basilica with a flat 



BYZANTINE AKT. 183 

ceiling, and twenty veined marble columns brouglit from 
Constantinople profile tlieir corinthian capitals, already 
perverted, up to the round apsis. The edifice is of the 
sixth century, but the unchangeable mosaics which on 
both sides cover the frieze of the nave show as clearly 
as at the first day what Greek art had got to be in the 
monastic hands of theological disputants and of the 
rouged Csesars of the Lower Empire. 

It is stiU Greek art. Ten centuries after their death 
the sculptors of the Parthenon keep their hold on the 
human mind, and the babbling idiots who now^ usurp 
the world's stage ever detect with their blinking eyes, 
as through a mist, the grand forms and noble drapery 
which once ranged themselves on the pediments of pa- 
gan temples. Two processions extend above the capi- 
tals, one of twenty-two saints ending with the Virgin, 
and the other of twenty-two saints ending with Christ, 
and in neither of them do the extreme ngiiness, the 
close imitation of ATilgar reality as seen in the middle 
ages, yet appear. On the contrary the figures of the 
women, regular, rather tall, calm although sad, have 
an almost antique dignity ; their hair falls in tresses 
and is gathered at the top of the brow as in the coif- 
fure of nymphs : their stoles depend in long, grave 
folds. Equally grave, a file of grand virile figures de- 
velops itself, and near Christ and the Virgin are angels 
praying in large white vestments their foreheads encir- 
cled with white bandlets. But here all reminiscences 
end : the artists know traditionally that a form must be 
draped, that a certain adjustment of the hair is prefer- 
able and a certain form of the face ; they no longer 
know what virile form and what young and healthy 
soul lived beneath these externals. They have un- 
learned observation of the living model, the Fathers 
having interdicted it ; they copy authorized types ; 
their mechanical hands servilely repeat, copy after 
copy, the contours which their minds no longer compre- 



184 FEOM FLOKENCE TO VENICE. 

hend, and which unskiKul imitation is to falsify. From 
artists they have become mechanics, and in this fall, 
deeper and deeper every day, they have forgotten the 
half of their art. They no longer recognize human di- 
versity; they repeat twenty times in succession, the 
same costume and action; their virgins can do no 
more than wear crowns and advance with an air of im- 
mobility, all in great white stoles, one, especially, in a 
striped or mottled gold cloth like a Chinese frock, with 
a large white veil attached to the head and with orange- 
colored shoes, in short the costume of ancient Greece 
lengthened in monastic fashion and embroidered with 
oriental spangles. They possess no physiognomy ; the 
features, frequently, are as barbarous as those of a 
child's drawing. The neck is rigid, the hands wood- 
eny and the folds of the drapery mechanical. The per- 
sonages are rather indications of men than men them- 
selves ; and when the man is got at through the indica- 
tion the spectacle revealed is still more melancholy, 
which is the debasement of the model beyond the in- 
eptitude of the mosaicist and the decadence of man be- 
yond the decadence of art. 

There is not, indeed, one of these figures that is not 
that of a vacant, flattened, sickly idiot. Words are 
wanting to express their physiognomy, that air of a 
well-built man and with ancestors of a fine race, now 
half destroyed, as if dissolved by a system of long fast- 
ing and paternosters. They have that dull aspect, 
that species of lax debility and resignation in which the 
living creature, vainly struck, returns no sound."^ 
They no longer possess action, will, thought, or spirit ; 
they are no longer capable of standing up although 
erect. One w^ould imagine secret vices, so evident is 
the exhaustion of blood and human vitality. The 
angels are great simpletons with staring eyes, hollow 

* See, in particular, the seventli figure alongside of Christ. 



BYZANTINE ART. 185 

cheeks and that prim and chilled air common to peas- 
ants who, taken from the fields and transported amid 
the bickerings, formahties and restraints of theology 
and the seminary, become bleached and yellow, stupid 
and abashed. Above the angels several of the saints 
seem to be emerging from a long fit of nausea or a 
tedious fever : nobody would believe, before having 
seen them, that an animated being could become so 
inert and flabby and lose to such a degree, his physi- 
cal and moral substance. But that which most inten- 
sifies the impression is the figure of Christ and of the 
Virgin. Christ in a brown mantle, with the beard and 
hair of the ancient gods, is nothing but an impov- 
erished, belittled god; his brow, the seat of intelli- 
gence, is contracted and almost effaced ; his lips are 
thin, the face attenuated, and his big eyes cavernous. 
This degradation is unequalled except by that of the 
Virgin. The panagia has sunk away to an extraordi- 
nary degree ; nothing is left to her but her eyes ; the 
nose and mouth are almost gone, while her emaciated 
hands and fleshless face are those of a dying consump- 
tive ; she has the action of a manikin, or of a skeleton 
whose bones and tendons just move, her large violet 
mantle letting no sign appear of the contracted body 
beneath it. 



CHAPTER lY. 

CHAEACTEK OF THE CXVILIZATION OP CONSTANTINOPLE.— CHANGE 
AND ABASEMENT OF THE SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC SPIRIT.— SAN 
VITALE, ITS ARCHITECTURE AND MOSAICS.— JUSTINIAN AND 
THEODORA.— THE TOMB OF PLACIDIA. 

What kind of macliiiiery is it which, catching the 
human sprout in its cogs insensibly expresses all its 
sap and succulence in order to leave of it simply an 
empty form and an inert detritus ? First comes the 
brutal Roman republic, then the onerous imposts of the 
Roman Caesars, then the still more onerous imposts of 
the Byzantine Csesars, and a despotism in which all 
forces capable of depressing man are found combined. 
— The emperor is a pacha, who may deprive any of his 
subjects, even a bishop, of life without trial; he may 
confiscate whatever private property he covets or de- 
clare himself heir to any fortune he likes ; all dignities, 
all estates, all lives in this society anxiously hang upon 
the caprices of his arbitrary will. — The emperor is an 
inquisitor. Under Justinian twenty thousand Jews are 
massacred and twenty thousand sold. The Montan- 
ists are burned along with their churches. The patri- 
cian Photius, forced to abjure Hellenism stabs himself 
with a poniard, and in other reigns, we see heretics 
exiled, despoiled, mutilated or burnt alive. — The em- 
peror is the head of a faction or sect, at one time 
orthodox, and at another heretic, now persecuting the 
"Blues" and now the "Greens," allowing his own 
party to commit robberies, assassinations and other out- 
rages on the public highways. — The emperor is a pre- 
fect over morals and manners. Under Justinian vo- 



DESPOTISM OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE. 187 

luptuoiisness is punished the same as assassination, 
and parricides, and debauchees are paraded bleeding 
through the streets of Constantinople. — The emj)eror 
is a bureaucrat. His systematic administration, 
extending downward through all provinces, every- 
W'here stifles human enterprise in order to leave on the 
soil nothing but functionaries and tributaries. — The 
emperor is a professor of etiquette. A complicated 
ceremonial prescribes under him a hierarchy of offi- 
cials who are machines only, and whose actions, like 
his own, are subordinated to empty forms, the signifi- 
cance of w^hich is often quite unknow^n to them."^ 
Every mechanical contrivance wliich can suppress in 
man his power of will and activity Avork together con- 
tinuously and for centuries, the violent ones that crush, 
and the enfeebling ones that undermine, terror as in 
oriental monarchies, denunciations as in Imperial 
Kome, orthodox persecutions as in Spain, legal rigor- 
ism as in Geneva, the camorra as in Naples, and offi- 
cial routine and bureaucratic enrollment as in China. 
Like an axe that fells, like a file that wears, like an 
acid that corrodes, like a rust that defaces, the various 
elements of despotism in turn, hack, break, decompose 
or soften the sohd and trenchant steel subjected to 
their action. This is readily apparent in the language 
of their writers ; they no longer know how to praise or 
to blame. Trebonius, associated wdth Justinian, says 
that he fears that he wdll see him disappear, borne off 
by angels because he is too celestial. Procopius 
thinks that Justinian and Theodora are not human 
beings but demons and vampires sent to desolate the 
earth ; after eight books of adulation he at last lets 
loose his hatred and heaps up furious detractions wdth 
the blind awkwardness and mechanical rage of a des- 
perado who, having escaped torture, stammers, repeats 

* Codinus Curopalates. 



188 FEOM FLORENCE TO VENICE. 

MmseK and remains dumb.* Others are courtiers, cav- 
illers, and scribes, and the nation is the same as its 
writers. The characters which such a regime multiplies 
or brings forward consists first of palace domestics, em- 
broidered chamberlains, flaunting mercenaries, the 
eunuchs,t the intriguers, the extortioners and after 
these the scribblers, the casuists, the bigots, the 
pedants and the rhetoricians, and, by their side on 
the broad stage of society, horse-drivers, buffoons, 
actresses, lorettes and gandins. 

Such, indeed, are the conspicuous characters in the 
play. Old Eoman iniquity subsists under the monkish 
crust which Christianity has formed over it ; the con- 
demned are stiU given up to lions in the arena ; the en- 
tire city takes sides in the chariot-races, and the 
" Greens" like the " Blues" bear the colors of their dri- 
vers as badges, and conceal daggers in baskets of fruit 
in order to assassinate each other at their leisure. As 
formerly in the Floral Games, women appear naked on 
the stage ; if new regulations impose a girdle on them, 
Theodora, the bear-keeper's daughter, and the future 
empress, takes advantage of the prohibition to invent 
lascivious refinements under the spectators' eyes. And 
these are the same people that surrender themselves 
furiously to theological passions. "Ask a man,*' says 
Gregory of Nazianza, " to change a coin for you and he 
will inform you how the Son differs fi'om the Father. 
Demand of another the price of bread and he willreply 
that the Son is inferior to the Father. Try to ascertain 
if your bath is ready, and you will be told that the Son 
is created without substance." They massacre each 
other on account of these doctrines, and the only point 
of interest likely to excite a revolt at Constantinople is 

* Compare in Procopius and in Tacitus a dunce's hatred with that 
of a man. 

f A wealthy widow bequeathed to the Emperor Theophilus three 
hundred of these characters. 



OKIENTAL COEKUPTION. 1B9 

the question of azjmite wafers or the twofold nature of 
Jesus Christ. The trisagion, simple or complete, is sung 
simultaneously in the cathedral by two inimical choirs, 
and the adversaries fall to belaboring each other with 
stones and clubs. Justinian passes entire nights with 
graybeards examining ecclesiastical documents while 
the monks who swarm in the Archipelago equip a fleet 
in order to defend images against Leo the Isaurian. 
These circus amateurs and the young beaux who dress 
like Huns through a fashionable caprice, these courte- 
zans worn out with vices, these languid voluptuaries 
who people the summer palaces of the Bosphorus, all 
fast, form processions, recite religious symbols and 
demand persecutions of newly installed emperors."^' 
" Long live the Emperor ! Long live the Empress ! 
Unearth the bones of the Manichseans ! He who will 
not curse Severus is a Manichsean ! Cast Severus out ! 
Cast out the new Judas ! Put down the enemies of the 
Trinity ! Unearth the bones of the Eutychians ! Cast 
the Manichaeans out of the Church ! Cast- out the two 
Stephens !" Incompetent to fight, to rule, to labor or 
to think they still know how to wrangle and to enjoy 
themselves. The sophist and the epicurean live on the 
remnants of human dissolution ; the play of formulas 
in vacant minds, and the cravings of the senses in 
degenerate bodies are the last springs of activity, and 
the two works to which this civilization tends, both 
marked with the same imprint, both artificial, vast and 
void, both formed without taste or reason by the rou- 
tine of logical or industrial processes are, first, the 
complicated minute scaffolding of the symbolry and 
distinctions of theology, and, second, the ghttering 
composite scaffolding of accumulated wealth and ex- 
travagant luxury. 

* Codinus, notes to page 281. Compare the acclamations of the 
Senate on the death of Commodus, set forth in the history of Au- 
gustus. 



190 FROM FLOKENCE TO YENICE. 

Whoever could have visited Constantinople before its 
pillage by the Crusaders would have Tvdtnessed a 
strange spectacle.* After passing the enclosure of 
high crenelated walls and the towers which defended 
the city like a mediaeval fortress, he would have found 
an image of ancient Imperial Eome consisting of ranges 
of two-story porticoes traversing the city in every sense 
and from one extremity to another, domes whose gilded 
metal glittered in the sunlight, gigantic pillars support- 
ing colossal equestrian statues, eleven forums, twenty- 
four baths, so many monuments, palaces, columns and 
statues that antique civilization, eradicated elsewhere 
in the world, seems to have collected in this last asylum 
all its masterpieces and all its treasures. Effigies of 
victorious athletes brought from Olympus, statues of 
ancient gods wrested from sanctuaries and figures of 
emperors multiplied by public adulation, covered the 
squares and filled the baths and amphitheatres. A 
bronze Justinian arose on a pillar of seventy cubits 
high, its base vomiting forth water. A sculptured col- 
umn within which ran a spiral staircase, bore on its top 
the equestrian statue of Theodosius in gilded silver. 
Figures of tortoises, crocodiles and sphinxes placed 
upon other pillars lifted in the air the emblems of 
conquered nations. The sombre bronze of colossi, the 
pallid whiteness of statues gleamed between shafts of 
porphyry under the variegated marbles of the porticoes, 
amidst the luminous rotundities of the cupolas, among 
the long silken robes, embroidered simarres, and the 
gilded and motley costumes of an innumerable popu- 
lace. In a marble circus chariots raced around an 
Egyptian obelisk. Outside, a brazen column around 
which wound enormous serpents, and farther on, fan- 
tastic figures of Scylla and Charybdis, the antique boar 



* Du Cange, " Description of Constantinople." All autliorities 
are here combined. 



ANCIENT CONSTANTINOPLE. 15)1 

of Calydon and various marble and bronze monsters, 
indicated the fetes where Kons, bears, panthers and 
■wild asses let into the arena, amused the people with 
their yells and combats. There on a throne supported 
by twenty-four columns the Emperor, on Christmas-day, 
gave the signal, and men of all nations delighted the 
eyes of the crowd with the novelty of their costumes 
in form and in color. Farther on an amphitheatre 
afforded the spectacle of criminals abandoned to wild 
beasts. Toward the east St. Sophia displayed its 
glittering domes, its hundred columns of jasper and 
porphyry, its precious marbles veined with rose, striped 
with green and starred with purple whose saffron, 
snowy and metallic tints commingled as in Asiatic 
flowers among balustrades and capitals of gilded 
bronze before a silver sanctuary facing a tabernacle 
of massive gold, near golden vases incrusted with 
gems and beneath innumerable mosaics decking its 
walls with lustrous stones and spangles of gold. The 
dominant characteristics of this church, as throughout 
the city, were disorderly accumulation and unintelligent 
wealth. Magnificence was regarded as art and people 
sought not beauty but bewilderment. Precious materi- 
als were accumulated and fashioned into barbarous 
capitals. Greek models whose simplicity they could 
not comprehend were abandoned for oriental ]3rodigali- 
ty the display of which could be imitated. The em- 
peror Theophilus had the palace of the Caliphs of 
Bagdad copied, and the luxury of his new dwelling, in 
its oddities and extravagance, announced the puerilities 
and dotage of a perverted intellect reverting back in 
old age to the toys of its infancy. In the throne-room 
a tree of gold sheltered with its branches and leaves a 
flock of golden birds whose diverse voices imitated the 
warbling of living birds. At the foot of the platform 
stood two golden lions of natural size which roared 
when foreign envoys were presented. The high digni- 



192 



FEOM FLORENCE TO VENICE. 



taries of the palace formed rows each witli its special 
costume, its right of precedence, its attitude and other 
details prescribed in a book written bj the hand of an 
emperor. Ambassadors bowed their foreheads to the 
ground three times and while in this prostrate attitude 
a theatrical machine elevated the prince and his throne 
to the ceiling in order that he might descend again in a 
more sumptuous apparel. His bootees were of purple 
and his robe was starred with jewels ; on his head 
glittered a high Persian tiara strewn with diamonds, 
attached to the cheeks by two strings of pearls and sur- 
mounted by a globe and a cross ; the most skilful 
coiffeurs had arranged false hair in tiers above his 
head and his face was painted. Thus bedizened he 
remained mute and impassible with fixed eyes in the 
attitude of a god revealing himself to mortal eyes ; he 
was worshipped as an idol and paraded himself like a 
manikin.^ 

Some idea of this luxuriousness, and of this worship 
and society, can be had in the church of San Yitale in 
Eavenna. It was built in the reign of Justinian and 
to-day, although defaced on the exterior, miserably 
repainted within, ruined in many places, or plastered 
with discordant additions, is still the most byzantine of 
western churches. It is a singular structure, and in it 
we find a new type of architecture as remote from Gre- 
cian as it is from Gothic conceptions. The edifice con- 
sists of a round dome surmounted by a cupola through 
which the light descends. On the cornice turns a two- 
story circular gallery composed of seven smaller half- 
domes, the eighth, largely expanded, forming an apse 
and containing the altar, in such a way that the central 
rotundity is enveloped in an enclosure of smaller ones, 
the globular form prevailing throughout like the pointed 



* These proceedings and this attitude are already encountered with 
Constantine and Constance. 



THEODORA. 193 

form in mediaeval catliedi'als and tlie square form in an- 
tique temples. 

In order to support the cupola eight heavy polygonal 
pillars, connected by round arcades, form a circle, while 
smaller columns, two and two, bind together the inter- 
mediate spaces. The effect is peculiar ; the eye accus- 
tomed to following columns in rows is here surprised 
with curious intersections, an odd diversity of profiles, 
with upright forms cut off by round arches and other 
changing aspects at every turn presented by its discord- 
ant features. This edifice is the organism of another 
kingdom, arranged according to unknown symmetries 
and for other conditions of being, like a lustrous spiral 
shell for one of the articulata or vertebrata, pompous 
and strange if you please, but of a less simple type and 
of a less healthy construction. Degeneracy is visible 
at once in the capitals of the pillars and columns. They 
are covered with clumsy flowers and by a coarse net- 
work ; others, still more changed, present a cypher ; 
the elegant corinthian capital is so deformed in the 
hands of these masons and embroiderers as to be noth- 
ing but a jumble of barbaric designs. The impression 
is stamped at once on contemplating the mosaics. You 
see the empress Theodora, the ancient stage-tumbler 
and cu'cus prostitute, bearing offerings along with her 
female attendants : the face is pallid and almost gone 
like that of a consumptive lorette ; there are only enor- 
mous eyes, eyebrows joined together and a mouth ; the 
rest of the visage is reduced and thin ; the brow and 
chin are too small, and the head and body are lost un- 
der their ornamentation. There is nothing left of her 
but her ardent gaze and the feverish energy of a mea- 
gre and satiated courtezan, now enveloped in and over- 
burdened with the monstrous luxury of an empress ; a 
glittering diadem displays on her head stories of ruby 
and emerald stars ; pearls and diamonds are scattered 
in embroideries upon her robe, and her purple mantle 

9 



194 FROM FLORENCE TO VENICE. 

and shoes are embroidered with gold. The women 
around her sparkle like herself, striped with gold and 
strewn with pearls : the same fulness of eye absorbing 
the entire face, the same contraction of brow invaded 
by the hair, the same pallor of the blanched and plas- 
tered countenance. It matters little whether the mosa- 
icist is a mechanic copying a recognized type or a 
painter executing a portrait ; we have here an idea of 
the woman such as he beheld her or as she represented 
herself to him, an exhausted lorette bedizened with 
gold. 

On the other side appears Justinian, with his war- 
riors on his right and his clergy on the left, a sort of 
solemn simpleton in a grand brown mantle and purple 
bootees, decked and gilded like a shrine. He is an inert 
wooden figure ; his two ministers on the right are about 
to fall ; and his warriors, with their large oriental buck- 
lers are marionettes. The artist is fallen as low as his 
model. 

Back of the apse and on both flanks of the chapel 
run files of sacred personages : Christ between two an- 
gels and two saints holding a book ; near by diverse 
episodes from the Bible ; Abel sacrificing, Abraham en- 
tertaining his celestial visitants, and, on the vault 
above, peacocks, urns and animals. The art of group- 
ing figures is not yet extinct, — at least they know how 
to arrange a symmetrical composition. One can occa- 
sionally detect in a head of St. Peter or of St. Paul the 
remains of an antique type ; but the figures are stiff 
and jointless, closely resembhng those of feudal tapes- 
tries. Ever the same large hollow eyes, the same cor- 
nea, the same brown, livid, deathly visage : Christ 
seems like a corpse resuscitated from the tomb, the 
vision of a diseased intellect. 

I visited two or three other churches, Santa Agatha 
and the Baptistery. The latter is of the fifth century, 
somewhat like that of Florence, upheld by two stories 



THE TOMB OF PLACIDIA. 195 

of arcades, the columns and capitals of wliich seem, 
through their incongruities, to have been taken from 
pagan temples ; already in the time of Constantine im- 
potent architects despoil pagan edifices of their mar- 
bles and sculptures. Clumsy arabesques cover the 
walls, and on the vault appears the baptism of Jesus 
Christ around which the twelve apostles are ranged in 
a circle, so many figures of gigantic proportions in 
white tunics and gilded mantles. Their heads are 
small and of extraordinary length ; their shoulders are 
narrow and their eyes are buried in their great arched 
concavities. Nevertheless the ascetic regime has not 
yet narrowed them down to the same extent as their 
descendants of the succeeding century at San Vitale ; 
St. Thomas still preserves a trace of energy; St. John 
the Baptist, haK-naked, is still half-alive ; his thigh, 
shoulder and head are sound. You see in the water 
the entire nudity of Jesus ; excepting his arm the mus- 
cles still contract. Perhaps the christian artist had 
some pagan painting before him and his eyes, obscured 
by the tyranny of mystic ideas, followed contours 
which his dull trembling hand could not or dared not 
more than partially trace. 

Three or four other monuments fully demonstrate 
this decadence. That Placidia, an imperial princess 
to whom the Goth Ataulf her husband made a wedding 
present of fifty slaves, each bearing a basin filled with 
gold and another with precious stones, has her monu- 
ment near San Yitale. It is a small low temple in the 
shape of a cross into which one descends by several 
steps into a sort of sombre reddish subterranean cham- 
ber decked with mosaics. Kosaces, leaves, fantastic 
birds, fawns at the foot of the cross, evangelists, a rude 
figure of the good shepherd surrounded by his lambs, 
the entire work is savage and of barbaric, extravagant 
luxuriousness. Several tombs find shelter in the humid 
shadows ; one of them represents the divine lamb, with 



196 FKOM FLORENCE TO VENICE. 

a fleece of shells, and under the cross of Placidia's 
sepulchre you perceive a flock — of what — sheep, horses 
or asses ? Another cave contains a tomb of the Exarch 
Isaac who died in the middle of the seventh century. 
Tou see bas-reliefs here which a modern mason would 
repudiate ; the three magi dressed as barbarians with 
the pantaloons, cloaks and caps of German shepherds, a 
Daniel, and a Lazarus whose head forms a quarter of 
his body, and peacocks that can scarcely be recognized. 
All this art is feebleness and decomposition, like a de- 
cayed building tottering and going to pieces. Ka- 
venna, at this period, in passing into Lombard hands, 
only falls from one barbaric stage to another ; whether 
Byzantine or Gothic the two arts are equivalent. Along 
with man the soil becomes perverted; the fevers of 
summer kill the inhabitants, the marshes spread out 
and the city sinks in the earth. They have been 
obliged to raise the pavement of San Yitale in order to 
protect it from water. On visiting San ApoUinare in 
Classe, half a league from the city, you see on your 
way a marble column ; this is the remnant of an entire 
city, the last fragment of a ruined basilica. The church 
itself seems to be abandoned; it subsists alone in a 
desert, formerly one of the three quarters of Kavenna ; 
the crypt is often invaded by the tide, while near it a 
forest of pines, mute and the sojourn of vipers, has re- 
placed, on the side of the sea, the cultivation and habi- 
tations of man. 



CHAPTER y. 

FROM BOLOGNA TO PADUA.— ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY.— PADUA.— 
STATE OF SOCIETY IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY AND OF ART 
IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.— SANTA MARIA DELL' ARENE AND 
THE WORKS OF GIOTTO. 

It seems as if tliis country was entirely alluyial. It 
is an Italian Flanders. On both sides of the railway 
extends an immense plain, entirely green, filled with 
cattle and horses pasturing. The vernal sun every- 
where diffuses its joyous beams ; nothing impedes them 
except, on the horizon, a belt of slender trees like a 
delicate silken fringe ; the broad cupola of the sky is 
of the tenderest azure. 

The soil is thoroughly soaked with water and, soon, the 
canals commence. After leaving Ferrara the road 
forms an elevated causeway protected from inunda- 
tions ; ditches abound everywhere, and pools of water 
filled with rushes ; on the right is the silvery surface 
of the Po, so placid that it seems to be motionless ; 
thus does it glide along amply expanded amidst the 
universal freshness among polished sands and islands 
covered with wood. You travel along a straight road 
compact and clean as in Flanders, between poplars of 
a charming green. The trees are all budding ; spring 
as far as the eye can see is diffusing itself over all 
things. 

Often, at the end of a long white ribbon of road rises 
a bell-tower, and then a cluster of houses appears on a 
flat piece of gTOund; this is a village; the houses, plas- 
tered white and the i-uddy bricks of the campanile 
relieve sharply on the sky. Excepting the light it 
might be called a Dutch landscape. Calm and spark- 



198 



FKOM FLOEENCE TO VENICE. 



ling water is everywhere visible and, as evening ap- 
proaches, the frogs croak. 

Meanwhile, on the left, rises a lofty blue barrier, a 
drapery of mountains fringed with snow and relieving 
with exquisite delicacy ; the sky arches clear and pale 
and the young verdure overspreads the plain with an 
almost equally delicate tint. 

Padua, April 20. — Here I am in an Austrian country. 
One would scarcely believe it on seeing the books and 
engravings displayed in the shops of the booksellers, 
the most prominent being "le Maudit," the "Yie de 
Jesus" by Renan and by Strauss, (the latter translated 
by Littre,) Yictor Hugo, Hegel, etc. One engraving 
represents Garibaldi asleep, and Alexander Dumas 
contemplating him ; Garibaldi lies on a floor and near 
him is a pitcher of water and a crust of bread, 
the epigraph, by Alexander Dumas, comparing him to 
Cincinnatus. — The bookseller tells me, with a smile, 
that "le Maudit" is prohibited in Italian, but is not 
yet forbidden in French ; portraits of Garibaldi are in- 
terdicted but not lithographs that contain a number of 
figures. Under this systematic administration the law 
is executed to the letter, and before making any inno- 
vations instructions are awaited from Vienna. 

Proceeding onward we find a city in good order, 
provincial in aspect, provided with arcades and a green 
grassy prato. Its tranquillity, its respectable appear- 
ance and its gTay-coated sentinels remind the traveller 
that here, as in every well-governed city, the people 
must eat well, sleep better, take ice-creams at cafes, 
amuse themselves without disturbances and attend 
lectures at a university which create no excitement ; 
the only matter of serious import to the inhabitants is 
the payment of their taxes on the day prescribed. 
Thereupon he ponders over what it was in the middle- 
ages ; on its podestat Ezzelin the terror of children ; on 
the sufferings of its nobles who day and night screeched 



UNIYERSALITY OF ART IN ITALY. 



199 



with tortures; on tliose condemned young seigneurs 
who escaped from their guards, stabbed their judge 
and ripped up the face of their persecutor with their 
teeth ; on its sanguinary stmggle and the romantic 
adventures of the Carrari. And here, as at Bologna, 
Florence, Sienna, Perugia, and Pisa, he cannot avoid 
contrasting the terrible, hazardous and energetic life of 
feudal cities and principalities with the orderly pre- 
cision and tameness of modern monarchies. 

Here all that remains of the picturesque and the 
grand proceeds from the reaction of this great epoch. 
In every country a rich invention in the field of art is 
preceded by indomitable energy in the field of action. 
A father has fought, founded and suffered, heroically 
and tragically ; the son gathers from the lips of the old 
heroic and tragic traditions, and, protected by the 
efforts of a previous generation, less menaced by 
danger, installed on paternal foundations, he imagines, 
expresses, narrates, sculptures or paints the mighty 
deeds of which his heart, still throbbing, feels the last 
vibration. ^ This is why works of art are so numerous 
in Italy ; each town has its own ; there are so many 
that the visitor is overwhelmed by them ; one would be 
obliged to rewrite his descriptions constantly. I am 
quite content not to go to Modena, Brescia or Mantua ; 
all I regret is Parma. I shall leave Italy with but a 
partial idea of Correggio ; but I shall compensate my- 
seK with the Yenetian masters. 

Even at Padua, which is a second-class city, it is 
necessary to make a choice. We go accordingly to the 



* Take, for example, the generation between 1820 and 1830 after 
the Revohition and the wars of the Empire; Dutch art after the 
struggle of the Netherlands with Spain ; Gothic architecture and 
mediaeval poesy after the consolidation of feudal society ; the litera- 
ture of the XVII centmy in France after the establishment of a regu- 
lar monarchy ; Greek tragedy, architecture and sculpture after the 
defeat of the Persians, etc. 



200 FEOM FLOEENCE TO VENICE. 

church of Santa Maria dell' Arena, situated at the end 
of the city in a quiet corner. It is a private chapel, 
and stands in a large bourgeois garden, enclosed by 
walls, somewhat neglected, where vines on a green 
grass-plot are climbing up the fruit-trees. A servant 
pushes back a bolt, and the visitor is introduced into a 
nave which Giotto (1304) has covered with paintings. 
He was twenty-eight years old, and he has here por- 
trayed in thirty-seven great frescoes, the entire story pf 
Christ and the Virgin. No monument better repre- 
sents the dawn of the Italian Eenaissance. Several 
traces of barbarism still remain ; for example, he does 
not know how to render all actions ; in his " Christ at 
the Sepulchre," the attendants expressing their grief 
open their mouths Avith a grimace, and his " Hell,'* like 
that of Bernardo Orcagna, is filled with the grotesque. 
The big hairy Satan is a scarecrow like those of our 
ancient mysteries, and inferior demons are consuming 
or sawing up small naked bodies with meagre legs 
heaped together as in a salting-tub. Near by the re- 
suscitated leaving their tombs, have spare and twisted 
claws, and, what is still more repulsive, the huge dis- 
proportioned heads of tadpoles ; the quaint and impo- 
tent fancy of the middle ages peers out and flourishes 
here as on the doors of the cathedrals. Jacomino of 
Verona, a minor friar of this epoch, described these 
torments of the damned with still greater triviahty. 
Satan, according to him, commands " the wicked to be 
roasted like a pig on an iron turnspit ;" then, when the 
charred figure is brought to him, he replies : " Begone, 
tell that miserable cook that the morsel is not well 
done ; put it back on the fire and let it stay there." 
Dante alone could free himself from this popular buf- 
foonery and endow his condemned ones with souls as 
proud as his own. He was here in Padua the same 
time as Giotto and, it is said, stayed at his house, both 
being friends. But the domain of painting is not the 



GIOTTO. 201 

same as that of poesy, and ^\liat one accomplislied 
with words the other could not accomplish with colors. 
People were not yet familiar enough with the muscles 
and energies of the human organism to combine, like 
Michael Angelo, in a few colossal and contorted figures 
the tragic elements which Dante displayed in his nu- 
merous visions and in his lugubrious scenery. More- 
over, the talent and humor of the painter were not 
those of the poet ; Giotto was as gay as Dante was 
sad ; his fine genius, facile invention, his love of noble- 
ness and pathos, led him toward ideal personages and 
affecting expressions, and it is in this field, peculiar to 
him, that here, for the first time, with extraordinary 
richness and success, he innovated and created. 

Here, for the first time in a fresco, we find almost 
antique heads ; it is the same stroke of genius as that 
of Nicholas of Pisa : after a lapse of fifty years paint- 
ing and sculj)ture unite, and healthy, regular beauty 
reappears on the walls of churches as on the tombs of 
the saints. Around Christ on the Cross and in the 
Last Judgment, the noble heads of the saints have the 
solidity of structure and the firm chins of the Greek 
statues : nothing can be graver and simpler than the 
draperies, and nothing more beautiful than the figures 
of the ten seraphims crowned with glories. Extending 
along the entire nave, at the base of the wall, is a range 
of ideal women representing, in gray, the different vir- 
tues, all robust and calm, ample and finely draped ; two 
especially. Charity and Hope, seem to be Roman em- 
presses ; another. Justice, possesses a face of the 
sweetest and purest type. You feel that the painter 
lovingly seeks after and discovers perfection of form ; 
his Christs are not portraits ; their features are too reg- 
ular and too serene; one of them in the "Marriage 
Feast at Cana," in a wine-colored mantle reminds one 
of that which Raphael has placed in his " Transfigura- 
tion." The artist, evidently, does not paint fi'om the 



202 FEOM FLORENCE TO VENICE. 

model before him but, like Eaphael, " according to a 
certain conception of his own." This inventiveness is 
observable on all. sides, in his landscapes, in his archi- 
tecture, in the careful composition of his groups, and, 
above all, in the expressions. Some there are which 
come direct from the heart, so spontaneous, so true 
that none more genuine can be found. At the foot of 
the cross the Yirgin in a blue hood, her brow wrinkled 
and pale, swoons and jet, through a supreme effort, re- 
mains erect.^ The Magdalen extends her arms to the 
resuscitated Christ, vdth stupor and tenderness, as if 
desirous of advancing and yet remaining fixed to the 
ground. Lazarus, enveloped in his bandages, and 
rigid like a mummy in its coffer, but erect and with an- 
imated eyes, is an overpowering apparition. — This man 
possessed genius, ideas, feeling everything, save science 
which is the fruit of time, and finish in his execution ; 
his drawings were generalizations, consisting simply of 
outlines and folds of drapery ; in addi'ess, and in the 
art of the hand he was deficient. In a neighboring 
church, that of the Eremitani, are some frescoes by 
Mantegna, quite perfect, admirable in relief and of 
studied correctness; this is what a century and a half 
would have taught Giotto; what a painter he would 
have been had he mastered such processes ! Perhaps 
the world would have seen a second Eaphael. 



* This reminds us of one of Corneille's lines describing his Roman 
heroine suddenly falling like a statue : 

"Non, je ne pleure pas, madame, mais je meurs." 



CHAPTER VI. 

PADUA, CONTimiED.— SAN GIUSTINA.— SAN ANTONIO.— THE SCULP- 
TORS AND DECORATORS OF THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH 
CENTURIES.— THE MUNICIPAL SYSTEM COMPARED WITH THE 
EXTENDED GOVERNMENTS OF MODERN TIMES.— THE ADVANTA- 
GES AND DRAWBACKS OP CONTEMPORARY CIVILIZATION. 

We return to the Prate, wliich is green and radiant 
with Spring. A canal crosses it and statues are ranged 
among the trunks of the trees. Around it rise high 
walls of red brick ; blue domes profile themselves in 
powerful masses against the pure blue sky, and, on the 
cornices of the churches, birds are caroUing in the midst 
of the solitude and the silence. 

In front, is San Giustina and its eight domes. Al- 
though built in the sixteenth century the byzantine 
form, with its rotundities, prevails. Spherical projec- 
tions form a circle around the cupolas ; within, between 
round arcades, the roof hollows out into concave buck- 
lers, its ample vault expanding like an interior firma- 
ment filled with hght. One comprehends immediately 
here the expressive force of lines. According as the 
ruling form differs so does the general sentiment differ. 
The aqiate angle and upspringing ogive excite mystic 
emotion ; the right angle and the solid square pose of 
the Greek construction suggest an idea of calm serenity ; 
the byzantine imperial or modern curve of the round 
arch gives a decorative aspect. Such is the impression 
made by this church ; with its portal of black, red and 
white marbles, its square pilasters, its projecting entab- 
latures, its Roman capitals, its grand proportions and 
its fine light it imposes on you not without a certain 
degree of quaintness and pomposity. Behind the 



204 FROM FLOEENCE TO VENICE. 

choir, and by the hand of Veronese, a deluge of little 
angels, amidst strong contrasts of light and shadow, is 
precipitating itself on the spot where the saint, in a 
splendid robe of yellow silk, surrenders himself to the 
executioner about to sever his throat. The rest of the 
edifice is filled with theatrical sculptures, gesticulating 
martyrs, rumpled draperies and writhing flesh-forms in 
the style of Bernini, only still more insipid. The 
grandiose of the sixteenth century thus terminates with 
the affectation of the eighteenth. 

But the principal monument, the most celebrated for 
its sanctity and the richest in works of art, is the church 
of San Antonio. On the solitary square surrounding 
it stands the bronze equestrian statue of the condottiero 
Guattemalata, executed by Donatello, and the first that 
was cast in Italy (1453). In his cuirass, with his head 
bare and his baton of command in his hand, he sits 
firmly on a stout-limbed charger, a vigorous animal for 
use and for war, and not for show ; his bust is full and 
square ; his great two-handed sword hangs below his 
horse's belly ; his long spurs with big rowels can bury 
themselves deep in the flesh when a perilous leap is to 
be made over a fosse, or to surmount a palisade ; he 
is a rude warrior ; and as he sits there in his harness 
you see that, like Sf orza his adversary, he has passed 
his life in the saddle. Here, as at Florence, Donatello 
dares to risk the entire truth, the crude details that 
seem ungracious to the vulgar, the faithful imit^ion of 
the actual person with his own features and professional 
traits ; the result of which is, here as in Florence, a 
fragment of living humanity, snatched breathing out of 
his century, and prolonging, through its originality and 
energy, the life of that century down to our own. 

As to the church it is very peculiar, it being an Italian- 
Gothic structure complicated with Byzantine cupolas ; 
round domes, pointed spires, little columns surmounted 
with ogive arcades, a fa9ade borrowed from the Eoman 



JESUrriC TASTE. 205 

basilica, a balcony modelled after Venetian palaces 
fuse together in one composite medley the ideas of 
three or four centuries, and of three or four countries. 
The great saint of the city, St. Anthony, lies here, one 
of the leading characters of the tweKth century, a 
mystic preacher who addressed himseK to fishes as St. 
Francis did to birds, tlie fishes flocking to him in shoals 
and signifying to him that they comprehended him. 
The sanctuary contains his tongue and chin ; at the 
most flourishing period of Jesuitic devotion, in 1690, it 
"was decorated by Parodi with an incredible expenditui'e 
of magnificence and affectation. The windows are em- 
bossed with silver, and a profusion of gay and animated 
marble figures mth arch expressions and suffused e^^es 
cover the walls with their sentimental graces. Back of 
the chapel a legion of angels bear away the saint in 
glory. There are perhaps sixty of them crowded and 
piled together like a swarm of cupids on a boudoir 
ceihng, with trim legs, smooth Httle bodies, pouting 
visages, demure, and with plump dimpled cheeks ; 
some, leaning on the cross have the lively and tender 
smile of a grisette asleep and dreaming. The whole 
chapel seems to be an enormous console of ornamental 
marble, and, to complete the impression, here and 
there throughout the church, are gallant virgins coquet- 
tishly lowering their coifs and playing with their fat 
hamhinos. The vapid devotion of the decadence evi- 
dently usurped for its own use the sanctuarj^ of simple 
old piety and overspread the popular faith with its own 
veneering and varnish. 

Other chapels show another age of the same senti- 
ment ; one, on the left, dedicated to the saint, was built 
and decorated by ten sculptors of the sixteenth century, 
Riccio, Sansovino, Falconetto, Aspetti, Giovanni di 
Milano, Tullio Lombardo and others. Richness of 
imagination, the superb sentiment of a pagan, natural 
life, the entire spirit of the renaissance here shows itself 



206 FEOM FLORENCE TO VENICE. 

in striking characteristics. The fagade of white marble, 
sewn with caissons of colored marble framed by black 
marble, resembles an antique triumphal arch. Marble 
columns covered with bas-reliefs and surmounted by 
round arcades give to it a monumental entrance. Shell 
niches, friezes of foliage, bucklers, horses, naked men, 
swans, fishes and cupids expose in the background the 
full diversity and breadth of heroic or animated nature. 
A multitude of petty sculptured figures embroider the 
walls and pillars ; here the naked Fates among grapes 
and flowers, with a somewhat lank and hteral imitation 
of the human figure for the first time comprehended ; 
there a resurrection in which a studied aim at pictur- 
esque form mingles with the poetic sentiment of ideal 
form. And, as if to testify to the ardent faith which 
ever endures the same through all artistic transforma- 
tions, you find amidst this imposing sensual decoration 
hundreds of ex-votos, in the shape of crutches, little 
ten- sous pictures and a quantity of charity boxes ap- 
peaHng for contributions. 

Nothing is wanting here for the assemblage on one 
spot of the entire series of human sentiments. Facing 
this monument built by the pagan renaissance, is a 
chapel of the fourteenth century, that of St. FeHx, ogival, 
painted and gilded, whose niches, similar to trefoils or 
bishops' bonnets, place gothic art before the eye bright- 
ened with oriental reflections through its proximity to 
Venice. It is red and sombre ; its azure vaults deflect 
into small arches ; arabesques run over the entire arch- 
way ; sculptured stalls with gilded canopies divide into 
finials; ancient paintings by Altichierri and Jacopo 
Avanzi, figures draped and armed as in the middle 
ages, crowd together stiff, as yet, and awkward, among 
gothic castles covered with Saracenic ornamentation. 
Venice, at this time, had a foothold in the Orient, and 
at Cyprus she alone carried on the christian crusade. 

But what makes this church a really unique monument, 



TOMBS. 



207 



a memoiial of all ages, are the tombs it contains. In the 
church of the Erematani I had just seen those of the 
Carrari. Ko work is better fitted to make us compre- 
hend the tastes and ideas of a centurj^ ; the architect's 
hand has labored at it as well as the sculptor's, and 
whatever diversity there may be in the monuments all 
symbolize the same idea, one of simple and prime sig- 
nificance, that of death, in such a way that the specta« 
tor follows in their differences the different modes in 
which man regarded the most formidable moment of 
life, the most poignant, the most universal and the most 
intelligible of his interests. The series here is com- 
plete. A lady deceased in 1427 sleeps, reclining in an 
alcove ; underneath her three small figures in a shell 
niche gravely meditate, and their heavy heads, their 
attitudes and their drapery are as simple as the funereal 
chamber in which her dead body reposes. Near this are 
tombs of the sixteenth century, that of Cardinal Bem- 
bo, a grand figure somewhat bald with a superb beard 
and the spirited air of a portrait by Titian ; the other, 
as grandiose and pompous as a triumph, that of the 
Yenetian general Contarini. A frieze of vessels, cui- 
rasses, arms and bucklers winds around the courses of 
marble. Shouting tritons and caryatides of chained 
captives display the emblems and insignia of maritime 
victory. A series of nude bodies, and heads having a 
simple air rise upward, possessing the vigor and frank- 
ness of expression characteristic of a healthy art in its 
bloom and vitality. On the sides are displayed two fig- 
ures of women, one young and spirited in a close-fitting 
tunic, the breasts salient, and the other aged and weep- 
ing but not less robust and muscular. On the top of 
the pyramid a beautiful Virtue with downcast- eyes, but 
with leg and breast exposed, seems like one of the 
youthful and glorious divinities of Veronese. You con- 
tinue on, and suddenly, at the end of the seventeenth 
century, the change in taste appears ; art becomes de- 



-08 FEOM FLOEENCE TO VENICE. 

votional, worldly, pretentious and vapid. A tomb of 
. 1684 combines figures half naked or cuirassed in pagan 
panoply, but bending over, affected, and in a flutter of 
curtains, garlands and skulls. Another of 1690, is 
a scaffolding of men, angels, busts and pennons, be- 
ginning with a desiccated skull and crossbones and 
ending with, at the top, a winged skeleton blowing a 
blast on a trumpet. After the plain memorial repre- '^ 
senting actual death comes the pagan memorial over- 
spreading death with heroic pomp ; then the devotional 
memorial which puts into the same parade the horrors 
of the sepulchre and all mundane elegancies. 

How gladly one reverts back to the works of the Ee- 
naissance ! How noble, how vigorous, how grand man 
seems between gothic insufficiency and modern arti- 
ficiality ! The rest of the day I passed in the choir. 
Large bronze statuettes stand on a bronze balustrade 
near bronze gates. Bronze carpets the enclosure, cov- 
ers the altar, bristles in bas-reliefs, rises on the pillars, 
and mounts upward in candelabras. Crowds of ener- 
getic figures display themselves everywhere in multi- 
plied bosses on the sombre and lustrous tints of the 
gleaming metal. Here the apostles of Aspetti (1593) 
through their proud stature and disordered drapery, 
seem the grandchildren of Michael xlngelo ; there a can- 
delabra by Kiccio (1488) twice a man's height, with a 
base three feet square, rears itself upward in tier upon 
tier of figures ; we cannot imagine greater richness of 
invention, so many and such diverse scenes, such luxury 
of ornamentation, such a complete world both christian 
and pagan magnificently combined in a single mass and 
yet distributed with so much art that every tier en- 
hances the value of the others, its swarm of details pro- 
ducing groupings and its multitudes a unity. On the 
square sides are displayed stories of the New Testament, 
the interment of Jesus amidst the despairing cries and 
gestures of a weeping crowd, and, again, Jesus in limbo, 



BENAISSANCE FANCY. 209 

amongst the stout bodies and fine naked limbs of re- 
deemed sinners. On the cornices, and, here and there, 
on the angles and mouldings are jDagan forms framing 
in the christian tragedy. Renaissance fancy has full 
play in a profusion of tritons, horses, twining ser- 
pents and torsos of women and children. Centaurs 
bear naked cupids on their cruppers brandishing torch- 
es ; other cupids sport with masks or hold musical in- 
struments ; fawns and satyrs bound amidst the fohage ; 
invention overflows, all this triumph of natural life, 
these panathenaic poesies of an unfettered creative hu- 
man imagination displaying their action and exuber- 
ance in order to deck the candelabra which bears the 
pascal taper. ^ 

What the worker in bronze did in those days is in- 
comparable. This art, that of the goldsmith, antici- 
pates painting a century, and attains to its perfection 
while the other is just beginning. Master of all its 
processes it encroaches on those of its rivals. Knowl- 
edge of types, familiarity with the nude, the movement 
of draperies, study of expression, of composition, of per- 
spective, — nothing is lacking. The modeller's thumb 
dispatches a picture complete, — thirty or forty figures 
grouped on different planes, active and excited multi- 
tudes, the entire human tragedy spread out on the 
public square between porticoes and temples.* Two 
by Donatello on the altar panels,t and twelve by 
Yelano and Andrea Briosco on the panels of the choir, 
for fecundity of genius, boldness of conception, the 
management and arrangement of crowds, surpass any- 
thing I have ever encountered. Judith and the entire 
army of Holofernes are massacred and put to flight ; 
Samson is wrenching away the columns of the temple 



* See the *' Martyrdom of St. Lawrence" by Baccio Bandinelli iu 
tlie well-known engraving. 
t 1446-1449. 



210 



FROM FLOEENCE TO VENICE. 



crumbling under its crowded galleries ; Solomon is 
seen under three stories of architecture surrounded by 
the assembled people ; the ten tribes of Israelites 
crowd around the brazen serpent their bodies writhing 
and swollen with the bite of reptiles, suppliant women 
handing forward their infants to be cured, wounded 
men in heaps and in contortions, all in a vast land- 
scape of rocks, palm-trees and flocks which diffuses the 
grandeur of a tranquil nature around the agitations of 
suffering humanity. All these souls and bodies live, 
and their energy reacts and communicates itself to the 
spectator. One feels exalted after a contemplation of 
them. Hence the nobleness of this art. Let the por- 
traits and history of the men of this day be contem- 
plated and we find that they fought the battle of life 
well, and that among artists, this exalts them to the 
highest rank. Let man strive and suffer, be wounded 
and downstricken, it matters not ; it is his lot and he 
is made for trial and struggle. The great thing is to 
struggle bravely, to will, to work, and to create ; the 
great source of action in him must not be wasted in a 
stagnant pool or in an administrative canal; it must 
flow on and steadily expand, not like a capricious 
torrent but hke a broad river ; the current once free 
should flow always, disturbed and tempestuous if 
necessary, but fertilizing, inexhaustible, and, fi^om 
time to time, bright beneath celestial splendor and 
joy. At the last hour he may disappear in the sea ; 
his career is over. At each turn of the century death 
swallows up and disperses the living generation ; but 
it has no hold on its past. The dead may rest tran- 
quilly; their work is done and their posterity in its 
turn, clearing its own pathway, must be content, when, 
after similar labor it lies down in similar repose. 

jOn contemplating the great works which fill all Italy, 
on pondering over the decadence which followed their 
production, on remarking how greatly the generation 



MODERN STATES. 



211 



which produced them surpassed ours in active vigor 
and in spontaneous invention, on reflecting that, thus 
far, all civilizations have flourished only to wither 
and to turn to dust, one asks himself whether that in 
which we live will not meet with the same fate and 
whether the great monument which protects us will not 
in its turn provide fragments for some unknown con- 
struction in which a renewed humanity will secure pro- 
tection of a superior order. Sentiment, in this connec- 
tion, must not be listened to ; our response must come 
from history and fi'om analysis. Here are the founda- 
tions of our edifice, and, at first view, they seem to 
guarantee its solidity. 

The States of modern times are not simple cities 
provided with a territory and which extermination or 
conquest may destroy, Hke Sienna, Florence, Carthage, 
Crotona or Athens. They embrace thirty or forty mil- 
lions of men forming distinct races and nations, and, 
so regarded, may resist invasions. Napoleon could not 
make a subject of Spain, so weak, nor put down Ger- 
many, so divided. When in 1815 William Humboldt 
proposed to partition France, too strong as he thought, 
the allies drew back, aware that at the end of twenty- 
five years the pieces would of themselves again unite. 
Look at the difficulties of Russia in these days in re- 
spect to a third of Poland. A garrison of five hundred 
thousand men, the half of a nation, is necessary to re- 
strain the other half, and the profit is not Avorth the 
expense. 

In the second place, the European states are formed 
of diverse races and nations ; hence one may replace 
or restore its neighbor if its neighbor falls. When 
Portugal, Spain and Italy fell in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, England, France and Holland resumed and con- 
tinued in their own way and for their own account the 
work they began. If in the course of a hundred years 
France should become a common administrative camp, 



213 



FKOM FLORENCE TO YE^'ICE. 



tlie protestant nations of England, Germany, tlie 
United States and Australia would individually develop 
and their civilization flow back on France at the end of 
two or three centuries, as that of France, after two or 
three centuries, now flows back on Italy and Spain. A 
monarchy, on the contrary, like that of China, a the- 
ocracy like that of India, a group of cities Hke Greece, 
a gTand unique organization hke the Roman Empire, 
wholly perish for the lack of equal and independent 
neighbors to subsist after them and renew their exist- 
ence. 

Three-quarters of the labor of humanity is now done 
by machinery, and the number of machines like the 
perfectibility of processes, is constantly increasing. 
Manual labor diminishes in the same ratio, and, conse- 
quently, the number of thinking beings increases. We 
are accordingly exempt from the scourge which de- 
stroyed the Greek and Roman world, that is to say the 
reduction of nine-tenths of the human race to the con- 
dition of beasts of burden, overtasked, and perishing, 
their destruction or gradual debasement allowing only 
a small number of the elite in each state to subsist. 
Almost all of the republics of Greece and of ancient 
and modern Italy^ have perished for want of citizens. 
At the present day the machinery now substituted for 
subjects and slaves prepares multitudes of intelligent 
beings. 

In addition to this, again, the experimental and pro- 
gressive sciences are now recognized as the sole legiti- 
mate mistresses of the human intellect, and the only 
safe guides for human activity. This is unique in the 
world. Among the Islamites, under the Ptolemies, and 

* Sparta perished di oXiyav^pooitiav, says Aristotle. At Flor- 
ence, tliere Trere but 2,500 voting citizens in tlie time of Savonarola. 
See Venice also. At the commencement of the sixteenth century the 
number of citizens enjoying political rights of all kinds in Italy was 
estimated at 18,000. 



PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



213 



in Italy in the sixteenth century, the sciences were 
confined to a small circle of the curious who might at 
any time have been extinguished by a proscription. 
Now they have obtained control, and as they have visi- 
bly ameliorated practical life public assent and all pri- 
vate interests rally around them. Moreover, as their 
methods are fixed, and their discoveries constantly 
augmenting, it may be demonstrated that they will go on 
indefinitely renewing and completing the human under- 
standing. Other developments of the mind, art, 
poetr}^, and religion may fail, diverge or languish ; but 
this one cannot fail to endure, to diffuse itself, and to 
suggest to man forever concrete views with which to 
regulate his faiths and govern his actions. 

These very sciences, having finally embraced in their 
domain moral and political affairs, and daily pene- 
trating into education, transform the idea entertained 
by man of society and of hfe : from a militant brute 
who regards others as prey and their prosperity as a 
danger, they transform him into a pacific being who 
considers others as auxiliaries and their prosperity as 
an advantage. Every blade of wheat produced, and 
every yard of cloth manufactured in England dimin- 
ishes so much the more the price I pay for my 
wheat and for my cloth. It is for my interest there- 
fore not only not to kill the Englishman who pro- 
duces the wheat, or manufactures the cloth, but to 
encourage him to produce and manufacture twice as 
much more. 

Never has human civilization encountered similar 
conditions. For this reason it is to be hoped that the 
civiHzation now existing, more solidly based than others, 
will not decay and melt away like the others ; at least 
there is reason to believe that amidst partial convul- 
sions and failures, as in Poland and in Turkey, it will 
subsist and perfect itself on the principal areas whereon 
its constructions are now seen rising. 



214 



FROM FLOEENCE TO VENICE. 



But, on the other hand, the magnitude of states, the 
development of industry, the organization of the 
sciences, in consolidating the edifice, prove detrimental 
to the individuals who live in it, every man finding him- 
self belittled through the enormous extension of the 
system in which he is comprised. 

Societies, in the first place, in order to become more 
stable have become too large, and most of them in 
order the better to resist foreign attack have too 
greatly subordinated themselves to their governments. 
Among the men who compose them nine out of ten, 
and commonly ninety-nine out of a hundred, do not 
concern themselves about public affairs ; they are in- 
different to general passions, and enter into the com- 
munity like beams in a building, or at least vegetate, 
discontented and inert, in petty pleasures and in petty 
ideas after the fashion of parasite mosses on an old 
roof. Compare this life to that of the Athenians in 
the fifth century, and to that of the Florentines in 
the fourteenth. 

Moreover, in order to become efficacious, industry 
has become too subdivided and man, transformed into 
a drudge, becomes a revolving wheel. Fourier used to 
say that man, in the ideal partnership of the globe, on 
finding that little pies had not yet arisen to a level with 
civilization, would collect two caravans of a hundred 
thousand culinary artists on a suitable spot, say on 
the banks of the Euphrates, and there compete under 
grand combinations of genius and of experiences ; 
the victor on receiving a centime per head for every 
person, would become very rich and, moreover, receive 
a medal. This is the grotesque image of our indus- 
trialism. Consider, in a universal exposition, the enor- 
mous effort directed to the perfecting of wash-bowls, 
boots and elastic cushions, along Avith their propor- 
tionate recompenses. It is sad to see a hundred . 
thousand families employing their arms and thirty 



THE EFFECT OF SCIENTIFIC PEOGEESS. 215 

superior men expending their genius in efforts to in- 
crease the histre of a piece of muslin ! 

In the last place, science, in order to become experi- 
mental and sure, being subdivided into prorinces grow- 
ing smaller and smaller, the truly thoughtful, who are 
the inventors, are obliged to restrict themselves each to 
a special compartment, and there live confined to a 
chemical or philological recess like a cook in his kitchen. 
In the mean time, facts having accumulated to a vast 
extent the human head becomes overcharged ; there is 
no longer an Aristotle : those who desire to attain to 
an approximative idea of the whole are forced to 
abandon the life of the body and overburden their 
brain ; the contagion spreading through the rest of 
society, a too highly developed cerebral life undermines 
the health both physical and moral. Compare the 
German doctors, the men of letters, even our pale and 
polished men of the world, all our amateurs, aU our 
learned specialists, to Greek citizens, — philosophers, 
artists, warriors and gymnasts, — to those Italians of 
the sixteenth century who each possessed, besides a 
mihtary education, five or six arts or talents, and, many 
of them, a perfect encyclopaedia. 

The work of man, in brief, has become stable because 
it has expanded ; but it has expanded only because 
man has become special, and a specialty 7zaiTo?i;5. Hence 
it is that we now see the great works declining which 
demand the natural comprehension and lively senti- 
ment of a complete whole, that is to say, art, religion 
and poetry. The way the Greeks and the Italians 
of the Renaissance regarded life was at once better 
and worse ; it produced a civilization less enduring, 
less comfortable, and less humane, but more complete 
souls and more men of genius. 

For these evils there are palliatives, perhaps, but no 
remedies, for they are produced and maintained 
through the very structure of the society, of the Indus- 



216 



FROM FLORENCE TO YENICE. 



try and of the science upon wliicli we live. The same 
sap produces, on the one hand, the fruit, and on the 
other the poison ; whoever desires to taste one must 
drink the other.* In this, as in every other constitu- 
tional complaint, the physician dresses the ulcer, recom- 
mends soothing appHcations, opposes the disease symp- 
tom by symptom, warns his patient to avoid excesses 
and, above all, enjoins patience. Nothing more can 
be done, for he is incurable and to cure him would 
be equivalent to recasting him. In writing this, what do 
I show myself but an exemplification of the evil ? To 
travel as a critic with eyes fixed on history, to analyze, 
reason and define instead of Uving gaily and creating 
"s^dth imaginative power, what is it but the mania of a 
man of letters and the routine of an anatomist ? 



BOOK y. 



TENICE. 



CHAPTEE I. 

FEOM PADUA TO VENICE.— THE LAGUNES.— PROMENADE IN YEN 
ICE.— THE GRAND CANAL.— THE PIAZZA DI SAN MARCO.— THE 
DUCAL PALACE.— " VENICE, QU'EEN," by PAUL VERONESE.— DAY 
AND NIGHT LANDSCAPES ON THE SEA.— SQUARES, STREETS, 
FIGURES AND CAFES. 

Apj^U 20, 1864. — The railroad enters on the lagunes, 
and suddenly the landscape assumes a pecuhar color 
and aspect. There is no grass or trees ; all is sea and 
sand ; as far as the eye can see banks emerge, low and 
flat, some of them half-washed by the waves. A light 
breeze wrinkles the glittering pools, and gentle undula- 
tions die away at intervals on the uniform strand. The 
setting sun throws over it purple tints, which the swell 
of a wave now darkens, and now makes changeable. 
In this continuous motion all tones are transformed and 
melt away. Dark and brick-hued depths become blue 
or green, according to the sea which covers them ; ac- 
cording to the aspects of the sky the water itself changes, 
all mingling together amid bright coruscations and 
golden stars bespangling the light waves, under silvery 
threads fringing the falling crests, under broad illumina- 
tions and sudden flashes reflected fi'om the side of a 
billow. The domain and the habits of the eye are trans- 
formed and renewed. The sense of vision encounters 
another world. Instead of the strong, clean and dry 
tints of solid earth, it is a flickering, a softening, an in- 
cessant glow of dissolving tints — a second sky as lumin- 

10 



218 



VENICE. 



ous as the other but more diversified, more changeable, 
more rich and more intense, formed of superposed tones, 
the combination of which is a harmony. Hours might 
be passed in contemplating these gradations, these 
delicate shades, this splendor. Is it to a spectacle like 
this contemplated daily, is it to this nature involunta- 
rily accepted as mistress, is it to the imagination forci- 
bly charged by these fluctuating and voluptuous ap- 
pearances of things that the Venetian coloring is due ? 

Aijril 21. — A day in a gondola. It is necessary to 
wander about and see the whole. 

Venice is the pearl of Italy. I have seen nothing 
equal to it. I know of but one city that approaches it, 
■ — ^very remotely, and only on account of its architec- 
ture — and that is, Oxford. None can be compared to 
it throughout the peninsula. On recurring to the dirty 
streets of Eome and Naples ; on thinking of the dry and 
narrow streets of Florence and of Sienna, and then on 
contemplating these marble palaces, these marble 
bridges, these marble churches, this superb embroidery 
of columns, balconies and windows, these gothic, moor- 
ish, and byzantine cornices, and the universal presence 
of the moving and glittering water, one wonders why 
he did not come here first ; why he lost two months in 
other cities, and why he did not devote all his time to 
Venice. One begins to think of making it his home, 
and vows, at least, that he will return here. For the 
first time one admires not only with the brain, but also 
with the heart, the senses and the entu^e being. One 
feels fully disposed to be happy ; one confesses that 
life is beautiful and good. All that is essential is to 
open the eyes, there being no need of effort ; the gon- 
dola glides a]ong insensibly, and, reclining in it, one 
wholly abandons himself physically and mentally. A 
bland and gentle breeze caresses the cheeks. The broad 
surface of the canal undulates with the rosy and white 
forms of the palaces asleep in the freshness and silence 



THE GEAND CANAL. -13 

of dawn ; everything is forgotten, profession, projects, 
self ; one gazes, becomes absorbed, and revels as if sud- 
denly released from life and soaring aerially above all 
things in light and in azure. 

The curve of the Grand Canal sweeps between two 
ranges of palaces, which, built each apart and for it- 
self, involuntarily combine their diversities for its em- 
bellishment. Most of them are of the middle ages, 
with ogive windows capped with trefoils, and balconies 
trellised with foliage and rosaces, all this rich gothic 
fancy blooming forth in the midst of its marble lace- 
work, without ever subsiding into the dull or the ugly ; 
others, of the renaissance, display their three super- 
posed ranges of antique columns. Porphyry and ser- 
pentine incrust the upper sections of the doors with 
their polished and precious material. Several facades 
are rosy, or mottled with delicate hues, their ara- 
besques resembling the foam of waves delineated on the 
finest sand. Time has clothed these forms with gray, 
melting livery, and the morning light sports in gladness 
over the broad expanse at their feet. 

The canal turns, and you see rising from the water, 
like a rich marine vegetation, or some strange and mag- 
nificent piece of white coral, Santa Maria della Salute, 
with its domes, its clusters of sculpture and its pedi- 
ment loaded with statues, and beyond, on another 
island, San Giorgio Maggiore, rotund and bristling like 
a pompous mother-of-pearl conch. You carry your eye 
to the left, and there is St. Marks, the Campanile, the 
Piazza, and the Ducal Palace. Probably no gem in the 
world equals it. 

It is not to be described ; you must go to engravings 
— -but what are engravings without color? There are 
too many forms, too vast an accumulation of master- 
pieces, too great prodigality of invention ; all one can 
do is to abstract from it some dry, general impression 
like a broken branch picked up and preserved in order 



5JX5U VENICE. 

to convey some idea of a blooming tree. Supreme over 
all is a rich exuberant fancy, parts that glide into a 
whole, a diversity and contrasts that terminate in 
harmony. Imagine eight or ten jewels encircling the 
neck or the arms of a woman, and all in harmony 
through their own magnificence or through her beauty. 
The admirable piazza, bordered with porticoes and 
palaces, extends rectangularly its forests of columns, its 
Corinthian capitals, its statues, its noble and varied ar- 
rangement of classic forms. At its extremity, half 
gothic, half byzantine, rises the Basilica, under bulbous 
domes and tapering belfries, its arcades festooned with 
figures, its porches laced with light columns, its arches 
wainscoted with mosaics, its pavements incrusted with 
colored marbles, and its cupolas scintillating with gold ; 
a strange mysterious sanctuary, a sort of christian 
mosque in which cascades of light vacillate in ruddy 
shadows like the wings of genii within the purple, me- 
tallic walls of subterranean abodes. All this teems 
with sparks and radiance. A few paces off, bare and 
erect like a ship's mast, the gigantic Campanile towers 
in the air and announces to distant mariners the time- 
honored royalty of Venice. At its base, closely pressed 
to it, the delicate loggetta of Sansovino seems like a 
flower, so many statues, bas-reliefs, bronzes and mar- 
bles, whatever is rich and imaginative of living and ele- 
gant art, crowd around it to adorn it. Famous frag- 
ments, scattered about, form in the open air a museum 
and a memorial : quadrangular columns brought from St. 
Jean d'Acre, four bronze horses taken from Constanti- 
nople, bronze pillars to which the city standards were 
attached, two granite shafts bearing on their tops the 
dragon and winged lion of the Republic, and, in front, 
a wide marble quay and steps to which the black flo- 
tilla of gondolas lies moored. The eye turns to the 
sea and you no longer desire to contemplate anything 
else ; it ma^^ be seen in the pictures of Canaletti, but 



VENETIAN BRILLIANCY. 221 

only throiigli a yeil. Painted light is not actual light. 
Around the architecture, the water, expanded into a 
lake, entwines its magical frame with its green and 
blue tones and its flickering sea-green crystal. Myriads 
of little waves sport and gleam in the breeze, and their 
crests palpitate with scintillations. On the horizon to- 
ward the east, at the end of the Slaves' quay appear 
masts of vessels, tops of churches and the pointed ver- 
dure of an extensive garden. All this issues from the 
water ; on every side the flood fills the canals, sweep- 
ing along the quays, losing itself on the horizon, rush- 
ing between the houses, and skirting the sides of the 
churches. The lustrous, luminous, enveloping sea pen- 
etrates into and encircles Venice as if with a halo. 

Like a magnificent diamond in a brilliant setting 
the Ducal Palace effaces the rest. I can describe 
nothing to-day — all I care to do is to enjoy myself. 
Never has the like architecture been seen ; all, here, is 
novel ; you feel yourself drawn out of the conventional ; 
you realize that outside of classic or gothic forms, 
which we repeat and impose on ourselves, there is an 
entire world ; that human invention is illimitable ; that, 
Hke nature, it may break all the rules and produce a 
perfect work after a model opposed to that to which we 
are told to conform. Every habit of the eye is reversed, 
and we see here with surprise and delight, oriental fancy 
grafting the full on the empty instead of the empty on 
the full. A colonnade of robust shafts bears a second 
and a lighter one decorated with ogives and with trefoils, 
while above this support, so frail, expands a massive 
wall of red and white marble whose courses interlace 
each other in designs and reflect the light. Above, a 
cornice of open pyramids, pinnacles, spiracles and fes- 
toons intersects the sky with its border, forming a 
marble vegetation bristling and blooming above the 
vermilion and pearly tones of the fagade, reminding 
one of the luxuriant Asiatic or African cactus which on 



222 



VENICE. 



its native soil mingles its leafy poniards and purple 
petals. 

You enter and immediately tlie eyes are filled with 
forms. Around two cisterns covered with sculptured 
bronze, four facades develop their statues and architec- 
tural details glowing with the freshness of the -early 
Renaissance. There is nothing bare or cold ; every- 
thing is decked with reliefs and figures, the pedantry 
of erudites and critics not having yet intervened, under 
the pretext of purity and correctness, to restrain a 
lively imagination and the craving for visual enjoyment. 
People are not austere in Yenice ; they do not restrict 
themselves to the prescriptions of books ; they do not 
make up their minds to go and yawn admiringly at a 
facade sanctioned by Yitruvius ; they want an architec- 
tural work to absorb and to delight the whole sentient 
being; they deck it with ornaments, columns and 
statues, they render it luxurious and joyous. They 
place colossal pagans like Mars and Neptune on it, 
and biblical figures like Adam and Eve ; the sculptors 
of the fifteenth century enliven it with their somewhat 
realistic and lank bodies, and those of the sixteenth, 
with their animated and muscular forms. Rizzo and 
Sansovino here rear the precious marbles of their stair- 
ways, the delicate stuccoes and elegant caprices of their 
arabesques : armor and boughs, griffins and fawns, 
fantastic flowers and capering goats, a profusion of 
poetic plants and joyous, bounding animals. You 
mount these princely steps with a sort of timidity and 
respect, ashamed of the dull black coat you wear, re- 
minding one by contrast of the embroidered silk gowns, 
the sweeping pompous dalmatics, the byzantine tiaras 
and brodekins, all that seigneurial magnificence for 
which these marble staircases were designed ; and, at 
the top, is Tintoretto's " St. Mark" to greet you, 
launched in the air like an old Saturn, also two superb 
women, "Power" and "Justice," and a doge who is 



NATIONAL GLOKIES. 223 

receiying from tliem the sword of command and of 
battle. At tlie top of the stan-case open the two halls, 
the government and state saloons, and both are lined 
with paintings ; here Tintoretto, Veronese, Pordenone, 
Palma the younger, Titian, Bonifazio and twenty others 
have covered with masterpieces the walls of which 
Palladio, Aspetti, Scamozzi and Sansovino made the 
designs and ornaments. All the genius of the city at 
its brightest period assembled here to glorify the coun- 
try in the erection of a memorial of its victories and an 
apotheosis of its grandeur. There is no similar trophy 
in the world : naval combats, ships with curved prows 
like swans' necks, galleys with crowded banks of oars, 
battlements discharging showers of arrows, floating 
standards amidst masts, a tumultuous strife of strug- 
gling and engulphed combatants, crowds of Illyrians, 
Saracens and Greeks, naked bodies bronzed by the sun 
and deformed by contests, stuffs of gold, damascene 
armor, silks starred with pearls, all the strange medley 
of that heroic, luxurious display which transpires in its 
history from Zara to Damietta and from Padua to the 
Dardanelles ; here and there, grand nudities of allegori- 
cal goddesses ; in the triangles the "Virtues" of Porde- 
none, a species of colossal virago with herculean, 
sanguine and choleric body ; throughout, a display of 
virile strength, active energy, sensual gaiety, and, pre- 
paring the way for this bewildering procession, the 
grandest of modern paintings, a " Paradise" by Tinto- 
retto, eighty feet in length by twenty feet wide, wdth 
six hundred figures whirling about in a ruddy illumina- 
tion as if the glowing volumes of a conflagration. 

The intellect seems to reel — blinded as it were ; — the 
senses stagger. You stop and close your eyes, and 
then, after a few moments, make your selection. I have 
to-day seen but one picture well, the "Triumph of 
Venice" by Paul Veronese. This work is not merely 
food for the eye but a feast. Amidst grand architec- 



224 



VENICE. 



tural forms of balconies and spiral columns sits Venice, 
the blonde, on a throne, radiant with beauty, with that 
fresh and rosy carnation peculiar to the daughters of 
humid climates, her silken skirt spreading out beneath 
a silken mantle. Around her a circle of young women 
bend over with a voluptuous and yet haughty smile, 
possessing that Venetian charm peculiar to a goddess 
who has a courtezan's blood in her veins, but who rests 
on her cloud and attracts men to her instead of de- 
scending to them. Eelieving on their pale violet dra- 
peries and on mantles of azure and of gold, their liv- 
ing flesh, their backs and shoulders, are impregnated 
with light or swim in the penumbra, the soft roundness 
of their nudity harmonizing with the tranquil gaiety 
of their attitudes and features. Venice, in their midst, 
ostentatious and yet gentle, seems like a queen whose 
rank merely gives her the right to be happy, and whose 
only desire is to render happy those who contemplate 
her. On her serene head two angels, thrown back- 
ward, place a crown. 

What a miserable instrumentality is words ! A tone 
of satiny flesh, a luminous shadow on a nude shoulder, 
a flickering light on floating silk, attract, retain and 
recall the eye for a quarter of an hour and yet there is 
only a vague phrase to express it. With what can one 
convey the harmony of blue relieving on yellow dra- 
pery, or of an arm one half of which is in shadow and 
the rest in sunshine ? And yet almost all the power of 
painting lies there ; in the effect of one tone on an- 
other as in music that of one note on another, the 
eye enjoying corporeally like the ear, a piece of writing 
which reaches the intellect having no effect upon the 
nerves. 

Beneath this ideal sky and behind a balustrade are 
Venetian ladies in the costume of the time, in low- 
neck dresses cut square and closely fitting the body. 
It is actual society, and it is as seductive as the other. 



KICHES OF VENETIAN ART. 225 

Tliey are gazing, leaning over and smiling, the light 
which illuminates portions of their clothes and faces 
falling on or diffusing itself in such exquisite con- 
trasts that one feels himself moved with transports of 
delight. At one time a brow, at another a delicate ear, 
or a necklace, or a pearl, issues from the warm shadow. 
One, in the flower of 3'outh, has the archest of looks. 
Another, about forty and amply developed, glances up- 
ward and smiles in the best possible humor. This 
one, a superb creature, with red sleeves striped with 
gold, stops and her swelling breasts expand the chemise 
of her bodice. A little blonde and curly-headed girl 
in the arms of an old woman raises her charming little 
hand with the most mutinous air and her fresh little 
visage is a rose. There is not one of them who is not 
happy in living, and who is not, I do not say merely 
cheerful, but joyous. And how well these rumpled 
changeable silks, these white and diaphanous pearls ac- 
cord with these transparent tints as delicate as the j^et- 
als of flowers ! 

Away below, finally, is the restless activity of the 
sturdy and noisy crowd : warriors, prancing horses, 
grand flowing togas, a soldier sounding a trumpet be- 
dizened with drapery, a man's naked back near a cui- 
rass, and in the intervals, a dense throng of vigorous 
and animated heads ; in one corner a young mother 
and her infant, all being disposed and diversified with 
the facility and opulence of genius, and all illuminated 
like the sea in summer with superabundant sunshine. 
This is what one would have to bear away with him in 
order to retain an idea of Venice 

I got some one to show me the way to the public 
garden ; after such a picture one can only contemplate 
natural objects. This is an embankment at the end of 
the city, and facing the Lido. Green shrubbery forms 
hedges ; red and yellow flowers are already blooming 
on the parteiTes ; smooth plateaus and knotty oaks, 



336 VENICE. 

witb. their budding tops, reflect themselves in the lumin- 
ous water. To the east is a terrace commanding a 
yiew of the horizon, and of the remoter islands. From 
this one contemplates the sea at his feet, rolling up in 
long thin waves on the ruddy sand ; exquisite melting 
silken tints, veined roses and pale violets, like the dra- 
peries of Veronese, golden orange, yellows, vinous and 
intense, like Titian's simarres, tender greens drowned 
in dark blue, sea-green shades striped with silver or 
flashing with sparks, undulate, conflict, and lose them- 
selves under the innumerable flaming darts descending 
from above at every discharge of the sun's rays. A 
vast sky of tender azure forms an arch of which one 
end rests on the Lido, while three or four motionless 
clouds seem to be banks of pearl. 

I strolled on farther, and finished my day on the sea. 
Toward night the wind arose and it became dark. 
Wan hues of a yellowish gray and of a purple green 
overspread the water ; this sends forth an infinite, in- 
distinct murmur, its blackening surge exciting a pro- 
longed sentiment of disquietude. The wind moans and 
roars, and heavy clouds whirl across the sky ; all remains 
of the conflagration reddening the west are gone. Oc- 
casionally the moon glimmers through the rents in the 
clouds, and thus drifts from opening to opening, extin- 
guished almost as soon as lighted, and shedding for a 
moment only its flickering beams on the restless flood. 
The rotundity and enormity of the celestial cupola are 
however still discernible ; the land on the horizon is 
but a thin black band ; the agitated sea, the vague 
mist, and overhead opaque masses of moving clouds 
alone fill all space. 

No words can define the tint of the water on such a 
night : brown and of dark jasper, at times ashy but 
audible through innumerable murmurings, one first 
hears it almost without seeing it, unable to distinguish 
objects in this vast desert of floating forms. Gradually 



SCENERY. 227 

the eyes become accustomed to it, and sensitive to the 
imperishable hght ever emitted fi'om it. Like icicles 
in a close and gloomy vault, or one of those magic mir- 
rors of unfathomable depth which legends describe, 
it gleams obscurely, mysteriously, but it always gleams ; 
at one time the point of a wave emerges, at another the 
back of a broad billow, now the smooth side of a tran- 
quil concavity, now the ^vhirl of a flashing eddy, some 
distant reflection, or the sudden break and dash of foam. 
All these feeble glimmerings cross, override each other 
and commingle steadily, emitting from this great black- 
ness a dubious luminousness like the lustre of metal 
seen in shadow, an infinite field of pallid brightness, the 
inextinguishable glow of living water vainly bedimmed 
by the deadened sky. 

Two or three times the moon shines out clear, and its 
long vacillating train seems like that of a funereal lamp 
beaming among pendent draperies, before the black pall 
of some prodigious catafalque. On the horizon, like a 
procession of torches and of tombs in limitless perspec- 
tive, appears "Venice with its lamps and its buildings, a 
group of lights here and there crowding together like 
clusters of tapers around a bier. 

The boat approaches. On the left, in extraordinary 
silence, the Orfano canal recedes motionless and desert- 
ed ; this calm of the dark and gleaming water, thriUs 
the nerves with pleasure and likewise with horror. The 
mind involuntarily plunges into these cold depths. 
What a strange life, that of this mute nocturnal ele- 
ment ! — Meanwhile the churches and palaces grow and 
swim on the water with the air of spectres. San Marco 
looms up, its architecture raying the gloomy deep with 
its multiplied domes and pinnacles. Like the phantasm 
of a magician, or the aerial splendor of an imaginaiy 
palace, the piazza with its columns and campanile bursts 
out between two ranges of light. Then the boat buries 
itself in suspicious lanes,where, at long intervals, a street 



228 VENICE. 

lamp casts on the water its flickering radiance : not a 
figure, not a sound, save tlie warning of the gondolier 
on turning the corners ; everj few moments the gondola 
pierces the obscurity of a bridge, and slowly, like a 
crawling worm, glides by the foundations of a palace, 
invisible in the dense cavern-like shadow. Suddenly 
it emerges, and an isolated lantern appears ahead lugu- 
briously trembling in the darkness, kindling a reflection, 
or casting a fugitive scintillation on the hvid back of a 
wave. At other times the water plashes against dis- 
jointed steps and crumbhng masonry ; the eye discerns 
a grated window, some leprous wall, and all around, a 
labyrinth of intersecting canals and tortuous streams, 
ceaselessly burying themselves in each other amidst 
unintelligible forms. 

Streets and Squares. — All is beauty ; I suppose that 
there are sympathies of temperament, — I find one of 
these here ; give me a grand forest on a river-bank, or 
Venice. 

Even to these watery lanes, even to the most insig- 
nificant places, there is nothing here which does not 
please. From the Loredan palace where I lodge, one 
winds around, in order to reach St. Mark's, quaint and 
charming calle tapestried with shops, drygoods, mel- 
ons, vegetables and oranges, and thronged with gay 
costumes, sensual insinuating faces and a noisy and 
ever-changing crowd. These passages are so narrow, so 
oddly contracted between their irregular walls that one 
can scarcely see the ragged strip of blue sky above 
them. You emerge on some piazzetta, some deserted 
campo all white beneath a sky white with light. Flag- 
ging, walls, enclosures, pavement all is of stone : round 
about are closed houses, and their rows form a triangle 
or a bulging square through the necessities of enlarge- 
ment or the chances of construction ; a delicately 
carved cistern forms the centre and sculptured lions, 
and little nude figures sport around the margin. In 



PICTURESQUE GLIMPSES. 229 

one corner is some odd cliurch, San Mose — a Jesuit 
fagade — or San Apostoli, or San Luca, so many portals 
covered with statues browned by the damp salt air and 
by the prolonged action of the blazing sun ; — a jet of 
light falling obliquely on the edifice cuts it into two 
portions, and one half of the figures seem to be moving 
about on the pediments or issuing from the niches, 
whilst others remain tranquil in the blue transparency 
of the shadow. You advance and, in a long outlet 
traversed by a bridge, gondolas are furrowing the mar- 
bled surface of the water with silver ; quite at the end 
of the perspective a golden flash marks the stream of 
sunshine, which, from a roof-top, makes the striped 
flank of the wave dance with lightning. An arch 
springs over the canal and a grisette in a black man- 
tilla raises her petticoat, exposing her white stocking, 
trim ankle and heelless shoe. She has not the spii'ited 
and hard air of her Eoman sisters; she trips along 
wavingiy under her veil and exposes her snowy neck be- 
neath the curls of her auburn tresses. Plump, smiling 
and soft she has the air of a peacock, or rather of a 
pigeon pluming his neck in the sunshine. I get lost — and 
so much the better ; without a cicerone I find my way 
by the sun and the inclination of the shadows. Before 
every church, at every spot within reach of a gondola, 
are groups of picturesque rogues, true lazzaroni, whose 
sole occupation consists in holding the boat close 
against the steps, and in summoning the gondolier 
when the passenger returns to it, or in loitering about 
in the sun, or sleeping, or begging. They stretch forth 
their palms, and we regard their dust}', dingy, mottled 
rags through which their ruddy flesh projects ; they are 
of a fine, low, transparent tone and they harmonize 
well with the sculptured recesses, or afar with the va- 
cant quays. We reach the square of San Marco ; the 
sun has disappeared ; but San Giorgio, the towers, and 
the brick structures are as rosy as a peach blossom. 



230 



VENICE. 



and, toward sunset, a purple vapor, a sort of luminous 
dust, a furnace-glow inflames the horizon. To the 
west each dome and pinnacle emerges from the sea, 
gleaming like cups and candelabra of agate and por- 
phyry ; all these points and all these crests intersect 
the grand celestial conch with extraordinary clearness, 
and quite low down on the sky we see a distant and 
gTowing tinge of emerald. 

Garlands of light begin to shine beneath the arcades 
of the Procurates. Taking a seat in the cafe Florian, 
in a small cabinet wainscoted with mirrors and decked 
with agreeable allegorical subjects, one muses with 
half-closed eyes over the imagery of the day falling 
into the order of and transformed as in a dream ; 
odorous sorbets melt on the tongue and are re warmed 
with exquisite coffee such as is found nowhere else in 
Europe ; one smokes tobacco of the Orient and be- 
holds flower-girls approaching, graceful and hand- 
somely attired in robes of silk, who silently place on the 
table violets and the narcissus. Meanwhile the square 
fills up with people ; a dark crowd buzzes and moves 
about in the shadow rayed with light; strolling 
musicians sing or give a concert of viohns and harps. — 
On getting up, behind the square thronged with moving 
shadows, at the end of a double fi'inge of gay and 
brilliant shops, appears San Marco with its strange 
oriental vegetation, its bulbs, its thorns, its fihgree of 
statuary and the darkening recesses of its porches be- 
neath the trembling ghmmer of two or three lost 
lamps. 



CHAPTER II. 

ANCIENT VENICE.— PROLONGATION OF THE MUNICIPAL SYSTEM. - 
ORIGINALITY AND RICHNESS OF INVENTION IN SMALL FREE 
STATES.— THE RENAISSANCE OF ARCHITECTURE.— SAN MARCO.— 
IMPORTATION AND TRANSFORMATION OF THE BYZANTINE STYLE. 
—MOSAICS AND SCULPTURES. 

That wliicli is peculiar and special to Yenice, that 
wliich makes her a unique city, is that she alone in 
Europe, after the fall of the Roman empire, continued 
a free city and maintained uninterruptedly the regime 
and the social and intellectual characteristics of the 
ancient republics. Imagine Cyrene, Utica, Corcyra or 
any other Greek or Punic colony miraculously escap- 
ing invasion or universal regeneration, and prolonging 
down to the French Revolution the ancient form of 
humanity. The history of Yenice is as wonderful as 
Yenice itself. 

Yenice, in fact, is a colony from Padua which took 
refuge from Alaric and Attila in an inaccessible spot, 
as formerly Phocea transferred itself to Marseilles in 
order to escape similar devastators in Cyrus and 
Darius. Like the Greek colonies she at first maintains 
the liens which bind her to the metropolis. In 421 
Padua decrees the formation of a city at the Rialto, 
sends consuls and constructs a church. The daughter 
grows up under the protection of the mother and then 
abandons her. From this time forth, and for thirteen 
centuries, no barbarian, no German or Saracen mon- 
arch lays his hand on her. She is not included in the 
great feudal organization ; Charlemagne's son fails 
before her lagunes ; the German or Frank emperors 



232 



VENICE. 



regard her as not depending on them but on Constanti- 
nople. And this dependence which is only nominal 
soon disappears. Between the gilded Caesars of 
Byzantium and the cuirassed Caesars of Aix-la-Chapelle, 
against the ponderous vessels of the degenerate 
Greek and the heavy Germanic cavalry, her marshes, 
her bravery and her skiU maintained her free and 
latin. Her old historians begin theu* annals Avith the 
boast of being Eoman, much more Eoman than the 
Romans of Kome so many times vanquished and so 
repeatedly stained with foreign blood. In fact she 
mthdrew in time from imperial corruption in order to 
revive in the laborious and militant fashion of the an- 
cient cities, in a safe retreat where the inundation of 
feudal brutes could not reach her. Man, with her, did 
not become enervated in the simarre of Byzantium 
silk, or rigid in a German suit of mail. Instead of 
becoming a scribe in the hands of palace eunuchs, or a 
soldier obeying the baron of a fortified castle, he works, 
navigates, constructs, dehberates and votes hke an 
Athenian or Corinthian of old with no other master 
than himself among his fellow-citizens and his equals. 
From the very beginning, for two centuries and a haK, 
each islet appoints a tribune, a sort of mayor renewa- 
ble every year and responsible to a general assembly 
of all the islands. Early chroniclers state that ali- 
ments and habitations are everywhere alike. In the 
sixth century Cassiodorus says that " the poor man is 
the equal of the rich, that theh houses are uniform, 
that with them there are no quarrels and no jealous- 
ies." We see reappearing an image of the sober and 
active Greek democracies. "WTien in 697, they give 
themselves a doge their liberty only becomes the 
more tempestuous. There are conflicts between fami- 
lies and personal encounters in the assemblies. If the 
doge becomes tyrannical and aims to perpetuate the 
office in his family they banish him, force him to be- 



CIYIC PRIDE AND PATEIOTISM. 333 

come a monk, or put out his eyes, and sometimes 
massacre liim according to the custom of the cities 
of antiquity. In 1172, out of fifty doges, nineteen 
had been slain, banished, mutilated or deposed. The 
city has its local god, a sort of Jupiter Capitolinus or 
Athene Polias ; at first St. Theodore with his crocodile, 
then St. Mark with his winged lion, Avhile the apostle's 
body, craftily obtained from Alexandria, protects and 
sanctifies the soil of the state as formerly (Edipus, 
interred at Colonna, sanctified and protected the Athe- 
nian soil. Public spirit is as vigorous as in the times 
of Miltiades and Cimon. Urseolo I. founded a hos- 
pital and rebuilt the palace and church of St. Mark at 
his own expense. His son Urseolo 11. leaves two 
thirds of his property to the state, and the rest to his 
family. Behold a second growth of the antique olive, 
fi'esh and green in the midst of feudal frost ! In the 
form of his government and in the limitations of his 
faith, in his usages and sentiments, in his perils and 
enterprises, in the motives which stimulate and in the 
conceptions which giiide him man here finds himself 
once more launched forth on a career which other 
human societies have forever abandoned. 

We no longer comprehend the force with which they 
ran on this narrow field. We no longer behold the en- 
ergies developed by limited societies. We are lost in 
an over-large state. We cannot imagine the constant 
provocations to bravery and to enterprise which com- 
ports with a community reduced to a town. We can 
no longer conjecture the inventive resources, the patri- 
otic outbursts, the treasures of genius, the marvels of 
devotion, the magnificent development of human pow- 
ers and of generosity to which the individual attains 
when moving in a sphere proportioned to his faculties 
and adapted to his activity. What is rarer nowadays 
than to feel, being a citizen, that one belongs to his 
country ! It is necessary for it to be in danger, which 



234 VENICE. 

happens but once in a century.* Ordinarily we do not 
see it ; it is for us only an abstract entity ; we interest 
ourselves in it only through a rational process of the 
brain. We appreciate it simply as a piece of complex 
mechanism which incommodes us and is useful to us 
but which, on the whole, lasts and does not go to 
pieces. A wheel broken or an accident, however grave 
it may be, merely depresses the funds and that is all. 
Our own life and that of our neighbors is not affected 
by it ; we always find policemen in the streets to pro- 
tect us ; our business suffers but little and our pleasures 
not at all. Since private life became divorced from 
pubhc life, the State, transferred to the hands of the 
government, no longer seems to be an individual con- 
cern. On the contrary, at this epoch, a blow given to 
the community deeply wounds the individual ; national 
matters are personal matters. When the Hungarians 
arrive before Venice there is no need of stimulating the 
Venetian to rush off to the Malamocco channel ; his 
house, his children, his wife are at stake, and he man- 
ages his boat himself as we of to-day work fire-engines 
on a fire breaking out a couple of yards from our own 
door. One hundred and sixty years of war against 
Dalmatian pirates is not a matter of government cal- 
culation, the plan of a cabinet, a system elaborated by 
a dozen political craniums and embroidered uniforms, 
like our African expeditions. Vessels intercepted, 
brides torn from churches, captive citizens chained to 
the oars, individual wounds on all sides bleed and 
bleed afresh in order to transform private persons 
into so many citizens. When the city, later, surrounds 
the Mediterranean with its colonies, the same situation 
maintains the same patriotic ardor. The Navagieri, 
dukes of Lemnos, the Sanudo, princes of Naxos and 



* France in 1594 under Henry IV., in 1712 under Louis XIY. and 
during the Convention. 



PUBLIC SPIEIT OF THE CITIZEN. 235 

of Paros, the five hundred and thirty-seven families of 
cavahers and foot-soldiers who have received a third of 
Crete in fief, know that their own security depends 
on that of the public. A defeat of Yenice involves 
with them invasion, conflagrations, mutilations and im- 
palement. When Greeks, Egyptians and Genoese 
launch their flotillas or when Germans, Turks or Dal- 
matians move their armies, the humblest inhabitant, 
whether trader, sailor or boat-calker, knows that his 
trade, his wages and his limbs are in danger. Through 
constant absorption of himself in the common weal he 
becomes accustomed to act with the entire body, to 
feel himseK incorporated with the countr}^, to be in- 
sulted and wounded in and through her, to admire her 
and disdain others, to become enamored of himself 
as the soldier of a noble, conquering and intelligent 
army led by St. Mark, the favorite of the Deity, as its 
general. A man, thus exalted, is very strong. Feeling 
great he does gTeat things ; generosity doubles the power 
of the spring which personal interest had already tem- 
pered. Consider the life of a modern city like Eouen or 
Toulouse, a simple collection of individuals each of whom, 
under a passable police, vegetates alone, solicitous only 
about himself, languidly occupied in getting rich or with 
pleasures, and, more frequently, in self-compression and 
in self-extinction. Contemplate the enterprising life of 
a free city like ancient Athens or old Eome, or Genoa 
or Pisa in the middle ages, like this Yenice a borough of 
fishmongers, planted on mud, without earth, without 
water, without stone, without wood, which conquers 
the coasts of its own gulf, Constantinople, the Archi- 
pelago, the Peloponnesus and Cyprus, which sup- 
presses seven rebellions in Zara and sixteen rebellions 
in Crete, which defeats the Dalmatians, the Byzantines, 
the sultans of Cairo and the kings of Hungary, wliich 
launches on the Bosphorus flotillas of five hundred 
sail, which arms squadrons of two hundred galleys, 



236 VENICE. 

which keeps afloat at one time three thousand vessels, 
which annually with four fleets of galleys unites Tre- 
bizond, Alexandria, Tunis, Tangiers, Lisbon and Lon- 
don, which finally, creating manufactures, an archi- 
tecture, a school of painting and an original society, 
transforms itself into a magnificent jewel of art whilst 
its vessels and its soldiers in Crete and in the Morea 
defend Europe against the last of barbarian invasions. 
We can comprehend by this contrast between its activ- 
ity and our inertia what society can force out of man ; 
what man may dare and create when the State makes 
him sovereign and a patriot ; what the ancient munici- 
pal regime, which we have abandoned and which Yen- 
ice revived, develops of courage and of genius in erect- 
ing and binding together in one single sheaf, the facul- 
ties which we allow to become insulated and wasted in 
our overgrown states. 

When a society thus develops itself through itself it 
has its own taste and art ; spontaneous life generates 
original productions, and invention stimulates the 
spring of the mind after invigorating that of action. 
But one thing is necessary to man, and that is respect 
for the source of inspiration within his own breast ; let 
each one guard his own, keep it from being impeded or 
disturbed, and see that it is made to flow freely ; the 
rest, work, fame and power, will come afterward and 
through increase. These Venetians betook themselves 
to Constantinople and brought back for their church 
the round forms, vaulted arcades and globular cupolas 
in which Byzantine architecture delighted ; but in re- 
peating them on their own soil, they transformed them, 
and the church of San Marco differs as much from St. 
Sophia as a young and simple nation, creative and vic- 
torious, differs from a punctilious and grandiose old 
empire. Architects murmur on contemplating it ; rules 
are violated at every step, and styles are commingled. 
They were ignorant of the way or, perhaps, did not 



INFLUENCE OF OEIENTAL ART. 237 

dare to copy, on this shifting soil the vast dome of St. 
Sophia ; but its rotundities pleased them and, instead of 
one single grand dome they erected five small ones, 
expanding them on the outside in bulbous form with 
pinnacles and singular curvatures. An exuberant fancy 
indulged itself to the utmost. From the peristyle 
throughout one is impressed with its overflowing rich- 
ness. The antique arch of the porches is capped with 
a vaulted casing setting off in gothic points its garland 
of statues. Delicate spires are introduced on the but- 
tresses. Eive hundred porphyry, verd-antique and 
serpentine columns bind together and support on the 
facades their incoherent stories, their barbaric or classic 
capitals and the magnificent medley of their polychro- 
matic marbles. Saracenic gates glitter with small 
horse-shoe trellises between quaint capitals w^here 
birds, lions, foliage, grapes, thorns and crosses inter- 
mingle their gross and fantastic designs. On the arch 
innumerable mosaics display stiff realistic bodies, 
meagre Eves wdth pendent breasts, lank Adams, all so 
many undressed laborers, numerous biblical subjects as 
naively indecent and as childishly awkward as the illu- 
minations of the most ancient missals. You recognize 
the mediaeval man who embroiders an original gothic 
decoration on an imported classic background; who, 
refined and disturbed by Christianity, no longer loves 
simplicity and unity but the complex and the multiple ; 
w^ho has to cover the field of his vision with the 
salienc}' and confusion of a prodigality of forms, wdth 
the novelty, luxury and search for capricious ornamen- 
tation ; who, becoming more imaginative as w^ell as more 
sensitive, can only satisfy his eye with an illimitable 
swarm of populous surfaces and wdth the brusque 
overflow of curious irregularity; wdio, finally, led by 
his maritime destiny to Byzantine basilicas and Ma- 
hometan mosques heaps up marbles, bronzes, purple 
Lues and golden gleams in order to express through 



^^o YENICE. 

his Christianity the composite and gorgeous poesy with 
which the spectacle of the Orient has imbued him. 

To-day is St. Mark's fete day. Women and young 
girls in black Veils, violet-colored shawls, and long 
loose petticoats, forming a gay crowd, throng the 
porches, and surge to and fro within the church. They 
kneel on the pavement, touch the feet of a bronze 
Christ with their fingers, and make the sign of the 
cross ; others mumble prayers and drop pennies in a 
box carried around for alms "in behaK of the poor 
dead." A procession of prelates passes, and you see 
their white and gold mitres, and sparkling damask 
copes winding around amongst the pillars. A chant is 
heard, quaint, and beautiful, composed of extreme high 
and low voices, a sort of monotonous melopoeia and 
which, perhaps, comes from Byzantium. The singers 
are invisible, nobody knowing from whence the music 
issues as it floats about ascending into the sombre, ruddy 
atmosphere Hke an incorporeal voice in a gleaming grot 
of fairies and genii. 

Nothing can be compared to this spectacle for 
strangeness and magnificence. We had just seen the 
square of St. Mark so gay and beautiful, its elegant col- 
onnades, the rich azure of the sky, and the broad lumi- 
nous expanse of light. We descend one step and the 
eye plunges suddenly into the purple gloom of a small 
sanctuary of unknown form filled with smothered gleams 
and reflections, surcharged and confined, like the low 
vaulted chamber in which a Jew or a pacha conceals his 
treasures. Two colors, the most powerful of all, cover 
it from pavement to dome ; one, that of the red-veined 
marble shimmering on the shafts of the columns, decks 
the walls and displays itself on the floor ; the other, 
that of gold, tapestries the cupolas and overspreads the 
mosaics, reflecting the light with its myriads of square 
cubes. Red on gold in shadow, — nobody can imagine 
such a tone ! Time has deepened and fused them to- 



SAN MARCO. 239 

gether; over the marble jDavement, cracked by depres- 
sions, the quivering domes flash with ruddy brightness ; 
there is no dayhght except that from the little rounded 
bays enclosed with stained glass. Innumerable forms, 
pillars seamed with sculptures, bronzes, candelabras, 
and with hundreds of mosaics, an asiatic luxuriousness 
of complicated decorations and barbarous figures, blend 
together in an atmosphere filled with spiral threads of 
incense, and floating with luminous atoms of sunny 
and nocturnal contrasts. Language cannot express 
the power of the light imprisoned in and scattered 
throughout this gloom. A chapel on the right is as 
sombre as a subterranean cavern ; a gleam of light 
flickers on the curvature of the arches. Alone, three 
brass lamps emerge from the palpable obscurity ; the 
eye dwells on their round forms, and follows the as- 
cending chains scintillating overhead and losing them- 
selves in unintelligible gloom ; thus visible, pendent 
from a train of coruscations, they might be taken for 
the mysterious corolla of magical flowers. These archi- 
tects of the tenth and twelfth centuries had a sentiment 
peculiarly their own. It matters little whether they 
imitated the Byzantine or the Arab ; this St. Mark, 
whom they brought from Alexandria, this Syrian apos- 
tle whose country and sky they were familiar with, 
filled their imagination with a poesy unknown to the 
barbarians of the north. They do not seek to express 
a melancholy sentiment, or go in quest of the enor- 
mous ; there is a groundwork of southern joyousness 
in their fancy, in the warm coloring which they infuse 
into their church, in that universal coating of lustrous 
mosaics, in that marble marquetry, in those sculptured 
galleries, in those pulpits, those balconies, and in those 
rich arab or gothic doors, each surrounded with its cor- 
don of apostles. In this vision-like fete all discords 
harmonize and awkwardness is no longer felt. The 
four columns around the high altar supportii g the 



240 YENICE. 

baldacliin disappear beneath a profusion of figures 
which from base to capital, each in its niche, cover the 
entire shaft. If we take them one bj one they are bar- 
barian ; we are repelled by their lack of force and the 
evidences they furnish of fruitless groping. The hands 
are out of proportion and the heads oftentimes absorb 
a third or quarter of the whole body; almost all are 
commonplace, and fi'equently stupid and vulgar look- 
ing. The sculptor was some boorish monk who copied 
boorish people. His hand wanders and unconsciously 
lapses into caricature. One saint is a grotesque figure 
with a swollen cheek, a hectic dropsical subject ; others 
are shapeless monsters that are not likely to live, and 
similar to the specimens preserved in an anatomical 
cabinet. And yet, a few paces off the general effect is 
admu^able ; you are struck by the superabundance of this 
indistinct dusky multitude tier upon tier under capitals 
of golden leaves, and dimly wavering in the tremor of 
the lamplight. The mediaeval artist, unable to render 
the individual has a feeling for masses and ensemUes. 
He does not comprehend, as did the ancient Greek, the 
perfection of the isolated figure, of the god, of the self- 
sufficing hero ; he goes outside of that beautiful en- 
closure ; what he perceives is the people, the multitude, 
the poor human species utterly humbled, like a vast 
throng in the presence of the Supreme Ruler. He 
leaves to it its ugliness, its deformities, its servility ; he 
even frequently exaggerates these ; but sublime, intense 
reverie, joy mingled with anguish, all that belongs to 
spiritual emotion and aspiration he understands and 
expresses ; and, if we do not find in his work the vigor- 
ous and healthy body of the independent and complete 
man, we distinguish the profound emotion of crowds 
and the impassioned religion of the heart. 

This is what gives life to the rigid mosaics with 
which all the walls, the arches and the smallest angles 
are covered. It is evident that they have imported 



HIERATIC ART. 241 

their workmen from Constantinople ; tlie puerility of a 
superannuated art and the insufficiencies of an infantile 
art have on all sides multipHed manikins whose 
enamel eyes no longer see. A \drgin over the door at 
the entrance has no body ; she is simply a skeleton 
under a mantle. A Christ over the altar in the chapel 
of the baptismal fonts has no longer a human form ; 
we would say that he had been disemboweled and 
emptied : there is nothing left of him but a wan skin 
badly filled with an indescribable soft stuffing. A 
Herodias in a red robe starred with gold displays at 
the end of her ermine sleeves the dried-up joints of a 
consumptive patient. The extraordinary feet of the 
angels must be seen ; also the large cavernous eyes of 
the saints, and the absorbed, inert, sunken features of 
the entire group. And yet, miserable as these figures 
are, the young who are obliged to borrow them from 
the old make of them a beautiful and harmonious 
whole. Lifeless, hieratic work enters as a fragment 
into work full of sincerity and inspiration. At this 
distance and in such profusion one ceases to note 
meagre and mechanical forms. They simply appear as 
so many heads in a crowd. The eye feels that it is 
surrounded by an assemblage of saints, an infinite his- 
tory, an entire legendary paradise ; it is insensible to 
detail; it beholds a kingdom and does not dream of 
enumerating or criticizing its inhabitants. Ancient, 
pious and heroic Venice thus regarded them ; and 
hence it is that, for centuries, she lavished her treasures, 
her labor and her conquests. It is the ideal world as 
her faith conceived it, as animated for her, as popu- 
lated as the real world ; such are her patrons, her 
patriarchs, her angels, her Madonna whom she contem- 
plates through these figures vivified by the empurpled 
light and the rustling gold of her cupolas. 

11 



CHAPTEK ni. 

SAN GIOVANNI E PAOLO.— I FEAEI-THE ItfAUSOLETJM OF GUATTEMA- 
LATA.— MONUjVIENTS OF THE DOGES.— THE SPIRIT OF DIVERSE 
CENTURIES AS STAMPED ON SCULPTURE.— THE MIDDLE AGES, 
THE RENAISSANCE, THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, AND THE 
MODERN EPOCH.— "ST. PETER MARTYR" BY TITIAN.— TINTO- 
RETTO. 

Ajoril 26. — The gondola buries itself in deserted 
canals to the north. Reflections from the water flicker 
in the arched concave of the bridge, like figured silk 
drapery, rose, white and green. We go out of the city ; 
it is noon, and the sky is of a glowing pallor. Stranded 
rafts stretch their washed and shining logs on the plain 
of motionless water. Facing us is an island surrounded 
with walls, a cemetery, which rays the flaming bright- 
ness with its crude whites ; farther on two oj three 
sails glide along the channels ; on the horizon the 
vapory chain of mountains develops against the sky its 
fringe of snow. The indented prow rises out of the 
water like a strange fish swimming tail foremost, while 
the dark form of the boat projects forward in the grand 
silence amidst innumerable shimmering golden waves. 

On an open space rises the equestrian statue of Col- 
leoni, the second one cast in Italy j"^ and a genuine 
portrait like that of Guattemalata at Padua ; the actual 
portrait of a condottiere on his stout war-horse, in a 
cuirass, with widespread legs, the bust too short and the 
physiognomy that of a weather beaten camp-soldier 
who orders and shouts, — not beautified, but taken from 
life and energetic. Facing it is San Giovanni e Paolo, 
a gothic church,t but Italian-gothic and therefore gay ; 
the round pillars, the broad, expansive arches, the win- 

* By Yerocchio, 1475. f 1236-1430. 



MONUMENTS OF THE DOGES. 243 

dows almost all white, forestall in the mind any mystic 
funereal ideas such as northern cathedrals suggest. 
Like the Campo-Santa at Pisa, and Santa Croce at 
Florence, this church is crowded with monuments ; add 
to these those of the church of the Frari and we have 
a complete mausoleum of the Republic. Most of these 
tombs belong to the fifteenth or to the early years of 
the sixteenth century, the brilliant era of the city, 
when the great men and great actions about to pass 
away ^vere still of sufficiently recent date for the new- 
born art to catch its image and express its sincerity ; 
others show the dawn of this great light ; others again 
show its decHne, so that one may thus follow through 
a range of sepulchres the history of human genius 
from its outburst, along its virility, to its final decay. 

In the monument of the doge Morosini, who died in 
1382, the pure gothic form blossoms out with all its 
elegancies. A flowered arcade festoons its lacework 
above the dead. Two charming little turrets ascend 
on each side upheld by small columns enlivened with 
trefoils, embroidered with figures and with canopies 
and pinnacles, a kind of deHcate vegetation on which 
the marble bristles and expands like a thorny plant 
with its needles and flowers. The Doge sleeps with 
his hands crossed upon his breast. These are genuine 
funereal monuments : an alcove, sometimes with its 
baldachin or bed-curtains,^ a marble couch carved and 
ornamented like the wooden estrade on which the aged 
limbs of the living man were wont to repose at night, 
and, within it, the man himself in his ordinary dress, 
calm in his slumber, confiding and pious because he 
had well discharged the duties of life, a veritable efQ.gj 
without affectation or anguish, and which leaves to his 
survivors the grave and pacific image which their 
memory ought to retain of him. 

* See the tomb of the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, 1423. 



244 VENICE. 

This is the gravity of the middle ages. Abeady, 
however, beneath this religious rigidness we see dawn- 
ing the sentiment of living corporeal forms, which is to 
be the special discovery of the following age. In the 
mausoleum of the doge Marco Corner, between five 
ogive arcades indented with trefoils and surrounded 
with light canopies, the Virtues, joyous angels in long 
robes, regard you with spontaneous and striking ex- 
pressions. In this dawn of discovery the artists naively 
risked physiognomies and airs of the head which ulte- 
rior masters rejected through a sense of dignity and 
in obedience to accepted rules. In this particular the 
Eenaissance which reduced art to classic nobleness 
really weakened it, as the purists of our seventeenth 
century impoverished the rich language of the sixteenth. 

As we advance we see some feature of the new art 
disclosing itself. In the tomb of the doge Antonio 
Vennier, deceased in 1400, Eenaissance paganism 
crops out in a detail of ornamentation, the shell niche. 
All the rest is still angular, florid, dehcately slender and 
gothic, the sculpture as well as the architecture. The 
heads also, are heavy, clumsy, too short and often set 
on wry necks. Artists copy the real ; they have not 
yet made a definitive choice of j)roportions ; they stiU 
remain ignorant of the canons of the Greek statuaries, 
still plunged in the observation and in the imitatiou of 
actual life ; but their lack of skill is charming notwith- 
standing. That Madonna whose neck is bent too much 
clasps her child with such exquisite tenderness ! 
There is such an expression of goodness and candor in 
the heads of those young girls a little too round ! 
These five virgins in their shell niches are so radiant 
with youthful purity and sincerity ! Nothing affects 
one so sensibly as these sculptures with which medicieval 
art closes."^ All these works are inventive, national 

* Compare tbe sculptiu-es on the tomb of the last Diike of Brittany 



MONUMENTS OF THE DOGES. 245 

and, if jou please, commonplace, but they possess sucli 
incomparable vitality ! The brilliant and overwhelming 
predominance of classic beauty had not j^et arisen to 
disciphne the inspirations of original genius ; there 
were provincial schools of art accommodated to the 
climate, to the country, to the entire social condition of 
things and still free of academies and of capitals. 
Nothing in the world is compensation for originality, 
the earnest and complete sentiment, the entire soul 
stamped upon a work of art ; the work then is as in- 
dividualized, as rich in subtleties as that soul itself. 
One believes in it ; the marble becomes a sort of diary 
in which are recorded all the confessions of a human 
experience. 

On advancing a few paces, following the course of 
the century,* one feels that this simplicity, this 
naivete in art gradually diminishes. The funereal 
monument is converted into one of heroic pomp. 
Over the dead are round arcades developing their no- 
ble span. Arabesques run gaily around their polished 
borders. Files of columns display their blooming 
acanthus capitals ; sometimes they overtop each other 
and the four orders of architecture develop their 
variety to please the eye. The tomb thus becomes a 
colossal triumphal arch ; a few have twenty statues of 
almost life-size. The idea of death disappears ; the 
defunct is no longer couched awaiting the resurrection 
of the final day, but is seated and looking at you with 
open eyes ; " he lives again," in the marble as an 
epitaph ambitiously states. In a similar manner the 



at Nantes, of the tomb of tlie last Dukes of Burgundy and Flanders 
at Dijon and at Brou, of the tomb of the children of Charles VIII. at 
Tours. 

* The tombs, for instance, of P. Mocenigo, deceased in 1476 ; — of 
Marcello, deceased in 1474 ; — of Bonzio, deceased in 1508 ; — of Lo- 
redan, deceased in 1509; — in the Frari, the tomb of Nicolas de- 
ceased in 1473 and of Pesaro in 1503. 



246 VENICE. 

statues that ornament the memorial become gradually 
transformed. In the middle of the fifteenth century 
they are still frequently rigid and restrained ; the legs 
of young warriors are a little lank, like those of 
Perugino's arch-angels, and are covered with lion- 
headed bootees and knee-pieces in which reminis- 
cences of feudal armor mingle with admiration of 
antique costume. Bodies and heads all trench on the 
real ; the merit of the figures consist in their involun- 
tary earnestness, in their simple, intense expression, in 
the force of their attitudes, in their fixed and pro- 
found regard. On approaching the sixteenth century 
ease and activity appear. The folds of draperies are 
displayed around robust forms in a grand manner. 
Muscles expand and show themselves. A young 
cavalier of the middle ages is, now, an athlete and an 
ephebos. Virgins, passive and hooded in their rigid 
mantles begin to smile and be animated. Their pen- 
dent, careless Greek robes leave visible the nude 
breast and the delicate forms of their charming feet. 
Inclining, half-thrown back, resting on one hip, or 
haughtily erect and contemplative, they reveal beneath 
their facile draperies the diversities of the living form, 
the eye following the harmonious curves of a fine 
human animal which, in repose, in action, in every atti- 
tude has only to be allowed to live in order to be 
perfect and happy. 

Nowhere are these figures more beautiful than on the 
tomb of the doge Yendramini, deceased in 1470. Art 
here is still simple and in its early bloom ; ancient 
gravity still subsists intact ; but the poetic and pictur- 
esque taste now commencing to dawn casts over it its 
richness and brilliancy. Under arcades of golden flow- 
ers, in the spaces of a corinthian colonnade, are warri- 
ors and females in antique costume, contemplative and 
weeping. They do not exert themselves or seek to 
attract attention ; reserve only renders their expression 



MOMXJMENTS OF THE DOGES. ^7 

more powerful. The entire body speaks, the type and 
the structure, the vigorous neck, the magnificent hair 
and the unimpassioned countenance. One woman 
raises her eyes mournfully to heaven ; another, half 
thrown back, utters an exclamation ; one might call 
them figures by Giovanni Bellini. They are of that 
puissant, limited era in which the model like the artist, 
reduced to five or six energetic sentiments, enforces 
them through a still intact sensibihty, concentrating 
into one effort complete faculties which at a later pe- 
riod are to be deadened by dissipation and wasted on 
details. 

All the grand passions terminate with the sixteenth 
century. Sepulchres become great operatic contrivan- 
ces. That of the doge Pesaro, in the Frari, who died 
in 1669 is simply a gigantic court-decoration rearing 
upward a massive pile of pompous extravagance. Four 
negroes clad in white and kneeling on cushions sustain 
the second story of the tomb, their tawny visages grim- 
acing over their stout bodies, while, between them, in 
coarse contrast, parades a skeleton. As for the doge 
he throws himself back with the self-important air of a 
grand seigneur as if uttering a Ji, done ! to clowns. 
Chimeras prance at his feet, a baldachin extends over 
his head and on its two sides are groups of statues in 
declamatory and sentimental demeanor. — Elsewhere, in 
the tomb of the doge Yalier,^ we see art abandoning 
turgidity for pettiness. The mortuary alcove is envel- 
oped in a vast curtain of yellow marble wrought with 
flowers and upheld by a number of little nude angels 
as frolicsome as so many cupids. The doge displays 
the dignity of a magistrate, while his wife, frizzled, 
wrinkled and dressed in flo\\'ing drapery, turns up her 
left hand with the air of an old dowager. Lower down 



* Deceased in 1656. The tomb, however, (at San Giovanni), is of 
the XVIII century. 



2^^ VENICE. 

an ordinary pier-glass Victory crowns the old gentle- 
man wlio seems related to Belisarius, and all around 
are bas-reliefs presenting groups of graceful senti- 
mental women practising the airs of the drawing- 
room. 

All this is perverted art, but it is art nevertheless, — 
that is to say the taste of the sculptor and his contem- 
poraries was personal and true ; they loved certain 
things belonging to their own world and existence and 
these they imitated and adorned; their preferences 
were not due to academies, to education, to book- 
pedantry, to conventionahsm. There is nothing else in 
our century. Canova's monument, so cold insipid and 
farfetched, executed after his own designs, is ridicu- 
lous : a great pyramid of white marble fills the entire 
field of vision ; the door stands open and here the ar- 
tist desires to rest like a Pharaoh in his sepulchre ; a 
procession of sentimental figures advances toward the 
door, Atalas, Eudoras and Cymodoceas, while a nude 
genii, extinguishing his torch, sleeps, and another, sob- 
bing, bends his head tenderly downward like young 
Joseph Bitaube. A winged lion weeps in despair with 
his nose resting on his paws, and his paws on a book. 
It would require a twenty minutes' lecture by a profes- 
sor of the Humanities to make this allegorical drama 
intelligible, — Near this is a portico-like monument in- 
flicted on poor Titian, rasped and polished like an old 
empire clock, decked with four pretty pensive spiritualis- 
tic women, two poor expressive old men with sharp and 
salient muscles, and two young barbers with wings 
bearing crowns. It would seem as if these artists were 
barren of all personal impressions, that they had noth- 
ing of their own to say, that the human form had no 
voice for them, that they had to fall back to their port- 
folios to find suggestions of its lines, that all their tal- 
ent lay in composing a curious enigma according to the 
latest aesthetic and symbolic manual. Death, neverthe- 



Titian's st. peter martyr. 249 

less, is important, and it certainly seems that one might 
say something of one's own about it without a book ; 
but I begin to tliink that we no longer have any idea of 
it any more than of any other matter of extreme inter- 
est. We drive it out of our minds as if it were a disa- 
greeable and unsuitable guest. When we attend a fu- 
neral we do it from a sense of propriety, chatting all 
the time with our neighbor on business or on literature. 
We have emerged out of the tragical condition. If we 
apprehend any great misfortune on the horizon it is, at 
most, an affau' of the pocket, simply involving transi- 
tion from the first to the fourth story.* Our imagina- 
tion seems to be absorbed by an infinite diversity of 
petty excitements and perplexities, visits, correspond- 
ence, gossip, disappointments and the rest. Smoothed 
off and frittered away as we are, through what portion 
of our being or experience could we comprehend the 
anxieties, the stupendous and prolonged terrors, the 
corporeal and phrenetic joyousness which once arose 
like mountains above the level of human life? Art 
lives on grand determinations as criticism lives on nice 
distinctions, and hence it is that we are no longer artists 
but critics. 

The same idea recurs to one on contemplating the 
paintings. There are many admirable ones in the 
chapel of the church dedicated to the Sacred Chaplet. 
One of these by Titian is entitled " St. Peter Martyr." f 
Domenichino has repeated the same subject at Bologna, 
but his personages are disfigured by an ignoble fear. 
Those of Titian are grand, hke combatants. That 
which impressed him was not the pain or grimaces of a 
convulsed face, but the powerful action of a murder, 
the display of an arm bestowing a blow, the agitated 
drapery of a man in flight, and the magnificent erect 

* Meaning a change from superior to inferior apartments. — Tr. 
f Lately destroyed by fire. — Tr. 

11* 



250 VENICE. 

trunks of trees extending their sombre branches above 
a scene of bloodshed. Still more vehement is a " Cru- 
cifixion" by Tintqretto. All is excitement and disorder. 
The poesy of light and shadow fills the air with brilliant 
and lugubrious contrasts. A jet of yellow Hght falls 
across the nude figure of Christ, which seems to be a 
glorified corpse. Above him float the heads of female 
saints in a flood of glowing atmosphere while the body 
of the perverse thief, contorted and savage, embosses 
the sky with its ruddy muscular forms. In this tem- 
pest of intense, angry daylight, it seems as if the 
crosses wavered, and that the sufferers were going to be 
precipitated ; to complete this grandiose confusion, this 
poignant emotion, you perceive in the background un- 
der a luminous cloud a mass of resuscitated bodies. 

The entire top of the wall is covered with paint- 
ings by the same hand. Christ is ascending into para- 
dise, and around him are grand naked angels rushing 
through space and furiously sounding their trumpets. 
The Virgin is borne off by an impetuous crowd of 
small angels in various complicated attitudes, whilst 
beneath her are the apostles shouting and thrown 
violently backward. Light vibrates on all sides and on 
all the canvases. There is not an atom of the atmos- 
phere that does not palpitate ; hfe is so overflowing 
as to breathe and bubble up fi'om stones, trees, ground 
and clouds, in every color and in every form that be- 
long to the universal feverishness of inanimate nature. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

PEOMENADES.— SANTA-MARIA DELL' ORTO.-SAN GIOBBE.-LA GUT- 
DECCA.-I GESUATL— I GESUITI.— MANNERS, CUSTOMS AND CHAR- 
ACTERS.— MISERY.— PUBLIC SPIRIT.— IDLENESS AND REVERIE AT 
VENICE. 

April 27. — I see pictures every day by Titian, Tinto- 
retto and Paul Veronese, but I am not yet ready 
to speak of them ; they form a complete and too rich 
a world. Tintoretto especially, is extraordinary ; one 
can have no idea of him without visiting Venice. 

My walk to-day is to Santa-Maria dell' Orto to see 
his great paintings of " The Worship of the Golden 
Calf" and " The Last Judgment." I find the church 
closed and the pictures rolled up and taken away 
nobody knows where. The edifice seems to be aban- 
doned. On one side is a dilapidated cloister broken 
open and serving as a lumber-yard, with the grass 
growing fresh and gTeen along the arcades. This 
is one of my greatest disappointments in Venice. 

The gondolier makes the tour of the city away to 
the north, and before this plain of light all vexa- 
tions and disappointments are forgotten. One never 
tires of the sea, of the infinite horizon, of the little 
distant bands of earth emerging beneath a dubious 
verdure, of the strange close-packed streets, almost de- 
serted, where the bricks of the houses totter, under- 
mined by the water ; where the piles below, incrusted 
with shells, are so diminished as to render a crash 
imminent. San Giobbe appears, a small church of the 
Renaissance, white and bare outside, excepting an 
elegant and delicately ornamented entrance. The in- 
terior overflows with ornament ; a monument by 
Claude Perrault, extravagant but not lifeless, displays 



253 VENICE. 

over a black marble sarcophagus a small sleeping 
angel, gross and vigorous, related one might say to the 
Flemish cherubs ; lower down are crowned lions crouch- 
ing with the grotesque solemnity of heraldic brutes. 
However decorated or perverted a church in Italy 
may be it always contains something beautiful and 
interesting. For example here is a fine picture by 
Paris Bordone, an old saint with a heavy beard bear- 
ing a cross between two companions, and, alongside of 
these, a pretty cloister bordered with columns uniting 
in arcades and whose cistern, decked with acanthus 
leaves, blooms luxuriantly above the pavement of the 
esplanade. These are the agreeable features of these 
promenades. One knows not what he is to encounter. 
He starts with two or three names of places in his 
head and that is all. He ghdes along noiselessly and 
is never jolted. No one speaks to him. He passes 
from a gilded temple crowded with figures to a solitary 
and dilapidated quarter. It seems as if he were 
liberated from his bodily tenement and that some 
benevolent genius delighted in feeding his mind with 
phantasmagoria and wondrous spectacles. 

The gondola skirts Santa-Chiara and the side of the 
Champ de Mars. The spaces of water become broader 
and its mottled undulations swell gently under the 
breeze with an indescribable intermingling of melting 
tones and hues. This is not ordinary water. En- 
closed within canals, and tinged by the exudations and 
infiltrations of the human colony it assumes an earthy 
ruddiness combined with pale, ochry tints and bluish 
miry darks, resembling the confused mixture of colors 
of a painter's palette. Under a northern sky it would 
be lugubrious ; but here under the illuminating sun 
and in the silkiness of the tender azure overspreading 
the celestial canopy it fills the eje with almost physi- 
cal delight. Veritably one swims in luminousness. 
It pours down from the sky, the water colors it and the 



JESUIT CHUKCHES. »od 

reflections multiply it a hundredfold ; there is nothing, 
even to the white and rosy houses, which does not re- 
flect it while the poesy of forms ever adds to and com- 
pletes the poesy of brightness. Even in this miserable 
and abandoned quarter we find palaces and facades 
adorned with columns. Poor and commonplace houses 
have large balconies enclosed within balustrades and 
windows indented with trefoils or capped with ogives, 
and reliefs of intermingled foliage and thorns. One 
loses himself in reverie. In vain does the Giudecca 
canal, almost deserted await its flotillas in order to 
people its noble port ; one muses over nothing but 
colors and lines. Three hues and three colors form the 
entire spectacle : the broad moving crystal, of a dark 
sea-green which winds about with a hard lustrous hue ; 
above, detached in bold rehef, the row of buildings fol- 
lowing its curve ; still higher in fine, the pure, infinite 
and almost pallid sky. 

The gondolier draws up to the quay and pretends 
that it is necessary to see the church of the Gesuati. 
We perceive a pompous facade of gigantic composite 
columns, then a nave whose corinthian colonnade is 
pretentiously joined to large pillars ; on the flanks, 
small chapels whose Greek pediments bear curved con- 
soles ; a coating of variegated marbles, an infinity of 
statues and bas-reliefs, insipid and very appropriate ; 
on the ceiling a pretty piece of boudoir painting in the 
shape of trim, rosy and bare legs ; — in brief a work of 
frigid luxury and costly magnificence. The Italian 
eighteenth century is still worse than ours. Our works 
always show some degree of moderation because they 
preserve some degree of finesse ; but theirs plant them- 
selves triumphantly on the extravagant. I saw yester- 
day a similar church, that of the Gesuiti. Its w^alls 
and pavement are incrusted with green and w'hite 
marbles, let into each other in order to form flowers 
and branchings. On the arches gold twists around in 



254 



VENICE. 



the shape of vases, pompons and flourishes, all seeming 
like the velvet and gilt paper hangings of a drawing- 
room costly enough to attract the wealthy. The urns, 
lyres, flames, clusters of foliage and white garlands 
that emboss the domes could not be counted. Spiral 
columns of green marble flecked with white support 
the baldachin of the altar, and, on this, meagre and 
sentimental statues, — Christ with the cross, God the 
Father seated on a huge white marble globe, — ^parade 
themselves supported by angels, both being sheltered 
by a roof of marble shell-work so odd as to provoke 
laughter. Grotesque extravagance displays itself even 
in the grand architectural lines ; not content with ordi- 
nary forms they have widened the arch of the nave, 
reducing its curve so low that it resembles the span of 
a bridge, and flanking this with cupolas that look hke 
concave bucklers. You feel the effort of a barren and 
laboring imagination ending in rhetorical superla- 
tives and in concetti, and which, in polished sonorous 
periods, furnishes a parlor worship for women and 
worldlings. 

All these follies of the decadence vanish alongside 
of two pictures belonging to the great epoch. The 
first is an " Assumption" by Tintoretto. Around the 
Virgin's tomb grand old men bend forward and express 
their amazement with tragic gesture ; they have those 
vigorous and lordly airs of the head which in the Vene- 
tian painters agree so well with the violent motion of 
draperies, and with powerful effects of light, shadow 
and color. The Virgin, aloft, whirls in the air, and the 
pallid, drowned changeable tints of her purple robe 
render still more striking her vigorous brown face, 
small brow, low hair and virile attitude. A woman of 
the people possessing the energy and magnificence of 
a queen, is the idea which arrests the eye ; no painter 
had a greater admiration of the pomp and sincerity of 
force. Tintoretto encounters in the street a market or 



255 

a boat woman, and bears away with liim lier perfect 
and rugged image ; lie surrounds lier with the oriental 
and patrician lustre of princely rank ; he showers the 
neighborhood with a deluge of small heads cravated 
with wings, distributing them even over the drapery 
held by the apostles. He is quite indifferent to the re- 
semblance of his bevy of angels to a dish of decapi- 
tated heads ; at one dash he translates the instantane- 
ous apparition to his canvas and there leaves it, for his 
work is finished. 

The other picture, a St. Lawrence by Titian, seems a 
fantasy of some Italian Kembrandt, a vision in gloom. 
It is night ; at first nothing is distinguishable but a 
great blackness vaguely spotted with two or three 
lights. It consists of a wide street. In a dusky tint 
like that of a cavern illuminated by a dying flambeau 
you perceive, through their more opaque darkness, 
some architectural forms, a statue and a distant multi- 
tude. A peculiar lantern, a sort of torch within iron 
bars, glimmers at the end of a stick, while the brazier 
casts its sinister beams along the pavement. Near this 
a superb executioner, a sort of tragic porter, leans 
backward, the muscles of his breast swelling with 
vinous tones in powerful relief on a herculean torso ; 
around him black reflections rest on cuirasses, or trem- 
ble on the blue steel of the lances. Meanwhile a 
luminous flame descends from the sky above, piercing 
the shadows like a glory, a bright gleam falling on the 
white figure of the martyr, and arousing on its passage 
the yellow flickerings, indistinct palpitations and mys- 
terious floating dust in the shadows. 

April 27. — Manners, customs and character. — I go this 
evening to the Benedetto theatre. Toward midnight, 
on returning, the dimly lighted and crooked streets, 
lost between the high houses, seem like places of 
ambush. 

The audience is poor ; the house is almost empty ; 



256 VENICE. 

out of a large number of boxes there are only about 
twenty half filled. Many of the lower class of the 
hourgeoisie and even the common people are in the 
parterre. And yet the house is beautiful. 

They play this evening, "Mary Stuart" translated 
from Schiller. To-morrow they are to give un interes- 
santissima comedia del Signore Dumas padre, Mademoi^ 
selle de Belle-lie. I have seen others by him at Flor- 
ence. We furnish the whole of Europe with vaude- 
villes, comedy, agreeable romances, toilet objects, etc. 
I have seen abroad, on the tables of nobles, collections 
of free songs, and, in splendid libraries, Paul de Kock's 
novels, richly bound, on the lowest shelves. By our 
works we are judged: dancing-masters, hairdressers, 
vaudevillists, lorettes and milliners, — but few other 
titles are bestowed upon us, save, perhaps, that of 
soldiers. 

The theatrical corps is as pitiful as possible. The 
faces of the musicians are subjects for pictures: one 
might pronounce them fatigued, haggard old tailors. 
The prompter prompts so loud that his voice sounds 
like a continuous bass. Mary Stuart in a black velvet 
robe, has the hands of a washerwoman ; she must cer- 
tainly cook her own dinner and sweep her own room ; 
otherwise she has vigor, a sort of furious and brutal 
energy. Elizabeth, rouged by the square foot, attired 
in frills and mock jewelry, responds to her in a shrill 
and stifled voice ; both of them are market-women 
showing their teeth. In order to get Mortimer to 
assassinate her rival she rants like a maniac. All 
overdo the matter horribly, which, perhaps, is requisite 
for an Italian parterre. Mary Stuart is called out three 
times after the scene when she upbraids Elizabeth. 

This is only a second-class theatre. "La Eenice" 
and the other leading theatres are closed. The nation 
is so hostile to Austria that a noble, indifferent or 
politic, would not dare to go to them ; it would be re- 



TAXATION. 257 

garded as a sign of satisfaction and lie would be 
hooted at. With such a disposition before them thea- 
tres may well decline. Everything indeed is declining. 
The " Guidecca," which is a capacious harbor has 
scarcely any vessels in it ; all commerce and business go 
to Trieste. The city is cut off from the Milanese by 
custom-houses. People do not work ; dejection under- 
mines all effort as it undermines all pleasure ; the no- 
bles live immured on their estates ; many of the palaces 
have degenerated and some seem to be abandoned. Out 
of a hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants there are 
forty thousand poor, thirty thousand of which live on 
alms and are inscribed on the charity registers. I have 
seen the report of the podestat, Count Piero Luigi, for 
the last four years. Out of 780,000 florins expended, 
10,000 went for instruction, 129,000 for benevolent 
purposes and 94,000 for public charity. I visited the 
hospital for the insane and I have its statistics ; the 
pellagre,^ bad food and excessive poverty furnish the 
gi'eatest number of the demented. Taxes, it must be 
said, are overwhelming. I am told of a house having 
an income of 1,000 florins which pays a tax of 400. 
A podere, that is to say a piece of ground with a habi- 
tation on it, brings 1,130 francs and pays 500. Another 
house, at Venice, is let at 238 florins and pays 64. In 
general a piece of real estate pays the third of its 
revenue. This big slice once devoured the fiscal teeth 
operate on another taxable piece. Besides imposts on 
successions, transmissions, food and others, besides 
those on rent and for the privilege of trading, there is a 
sort of income tax as in England. According to the 
merchant ^^ho furnishes me with these particulars this 
tax is a twentieth. A merchant pays the twentieth of 
his estimated profits, an emploj^e the twentieth of his 
salary. It is the worse for him if at the end of 



* A local cutaneous disease. — Tr. 



258 VENICE. 

the year Lis gain proves less than he anticipated. It 
is still worse if it be nothing, and worse yet if he 
should make a . loss. He is obliged to make his 
declaration in advance under oath. If he is convicted 
of having concealed any portion of his profits he pays a 
heavy penalty and, moreover, he is amenable to the 
penalty imposed on perjurers. Spies selected for the 
purpose speculate on his condition ; they calculate 
how much he expends per day, — so much for rent, so 
much for assistance and servants and so much for pro- 
visions; then, conjecturing what the profits may be 
according to the expenses, they control his declaration. 
This forms a sort of inquisition which discourages all 
industry. In this state of misery and inertia it is only 
the foreigners who have money, and all contend for 
them. Nowhere in Italy is hving so cheap for the 
traveller ; a boat for an entire day costs five francs ; at 
the slightest nod the gondoliers rush forward ; they 
strive to get ahead of each other and beg you to take 
them by the week at a discount ; there is no city where 
a man of moderate means and an amateur of the beau- 
tiful could be better off in a pecuniary way and indulge 
his day-dreams ; it is only necessary to neglect 
politics. The Venetians, it is true, do not neglect 
them. On asking a peasant woman if the Austrians 
were liked in the country, she replied " We like them, 
but outside (fuoriy) My poor old gondolier, on telling 
me of his poverty, added by way of consolation, " Gari- 
baldi will do something." — It seems that everybody 
here, even the Mayor, an official magistrate, is a 
patriot. It is well known that in 1848 the people, 
armed with pieces of broken pavement, drove away the 
Austrian soldiers and fought with courageous obstinacy 
after the defeat of the Piedmontese at Novara. On 
the French squadron coming in sight of the city during 
the late war the people became wild with excitement 
and, what is more, the excitement lasted. At the first 



PATRIOTIC FEELING. 259 

shot from tlie fleet the revolt was to break out ; the 
common people, the gondoKers, all were prepared. 
Several of them became insane on hearing of the 
armistice. Many emigrated and have since estab- 
lished themselves in Lombardy ; they could not get 
accustomed to the idea that Venice, which for so many 
years in Italy had escaped a foreign yoke, should alone 
remain in the hands of strangers : imagine five or six 
sisters in a family having become ladies and the last 
one and the most beautiful, the charming Cinderella, 
remaining a domestic. 

"Whether domestic or lady she is to the traveller ever 
the most gracious and poetic of all ; in contemplating 
her one has to make an effort in order to think of 
graver matters, on the interests of politics ; Austrian 
or Italian she is a fairy. One would like to dwell here. 
What dreams six months would furnish ! "What delight- 
ful promenades through art and history ! The library 
of San Marco contains a breviary which HemHng, the 
great painter of Bruges, has filled with his delicate 
figures. There are ephemerides by Sanudo in fifty- 
eight volumes, daily recorded and describing the man- 
ners and customs at the beginning of the sixteenth 
century, the brightest epoch of painting. What a 
happy life, that of any historian, amateur of pictures, 
who might come here to study, to meditate, to write ! 
Glancing up from his page he would see on the ceiling 
of the library the " Adoration of the Magi" by Vero- 
nese, its figures fi-amed between two grand pieces of 
architecture, the noble white head and splendid figured 
robe of the first king, of his retinue, of all the charac- 
ters displaj^ed, that white horse rearing in the hands 
of an amply, draped attendant, the two angels over- 
head, the exquisite carnation of their nude limbs and 
the rare beauty of their rosy vestments seemingly dip- 
ped in magical light. One would readily appreciate 
the idea exhaling from all this pomp, that of a joyous, 



2G0 



VENICE. 



expansive, unrestrained force, but ever noble, which 
swims in full prosperity and in full contentment. One 
would descend the marble staircases and leisurely 
enjoy luxuries which no monarch in Europe possesses. 
One would contemplate on a quay, in the shadow filled 
with watery reflections, some of the figures which for- 
merly supplied the great masters with their personages, 
some blonde and ruddy girl with hair flying around her 
brow and playing in careless flow ; the tanned and 
sombre visage and neck of some boatman under an 
old straw hat ; the great bulging nose, bright eyes and 
ample gray beard of some old fellow serving as a model 
for Titian's patriarchs; the white and somewhat fat 
neck, rosy cheeks, fine beaming eyes and waving 
tresses of some young girl tripping along and lifting 
her dress. One would feel the fertility and freedom of 
the geniuses who, from these slight, incomplete and 
scattered motives, derived so rich and so majestic a 
symphony. One would stray off to the Slaves' quay, 
to a little bench I know well, and there, in the cool 
shade, he would contemplate the marvellous expansion 
of sunlight, the sea still more glowing than the sky, 
the long smooth waves succeeding each other and 
bearing on their backs innumerable and tranquil 
sparkles, the hght ripples, the quivering eddies beneath 
their golden scales ; and, farther on, the churches, the 
ruddy houses rising upward from the midst of polished 
glass, and that eternal, rustling, moving splendor which 
seems like one beautiful smile. One would push on to 
the public gardens to gaze on the remoter islands on the 
vague banks of sand and the opening sea. All is a 
plain here up to the horizon, a glittering plain trem- 
bling with flashes, and blue-green like a sombre tur- 
quoise. The eyes would always be virginal to this 
sensation. They would never become satiated in 
looking at these masses of piles strewing the azure 
with their black specks, these flat islets forming a deli- 



VENETIAN DELIGHTS. 261 

cate line below the sky on the verge of the sea, farther 
on a belfry, the white spot of an illuminated house 
which at this distance seems no larger than the hand, 
and here and there the ruby sail of a fisherman's bark 
returning homeward slowly impelled by the breeze. 
One would finish the day on the Square of San-Marco, 
between a sorbet and a bouquet of violets, listening 
to BeUini's or Yerdi's airs played by the wandering 
musicians. The eyes meanwhile would fix themselves 
on the firmament above the illuminated square seem- 
ingly a dome of black velvet incrusted with silver 
nails; they would follow the outline of the Basilica, 
white like a marble gem, displaying in the darkness its 
rounded bouquets of columns and its fretwork of 
statues. One would thus pass a year like an opium- 
smoker, and to good account, for, the only true way to 
endure life is to be insensible to it. 



CHAPTEE V. 

THE LATTER DAYS.— EPICUREANISM.— CANALETTI, GUARDI, LONGHI, 
GOLDONI AND GOZZI.— THE CARNIVAL.— LICENSE.— THE LIDO.— 
THE SEA.— THE TOWER OF SAN-MARCO.— THE CITY, THE WATER 
AND THE SANDS. 

It is about in this fashion that the people in this 
country contrived to support their decadence. This 
beautiful city ended, pagan-hke, like its sisters the Greek 
republics, through nonchalance and voluptuousness. 
We find, indeed, from time to time, a Francis Morosini 
who, like Aratus and Philopoemen, renews the heroism 
and victories of ancient days ; but, after the seventeenth 
century, its bright career is over. The city, municipal 
and circumscribed, is found to be weak, like Athens and 
Corinth, against powerful military neighbors who either 
neglect or tolerate it ; the French and the Germans vio- 
late its neutrality with impunity ; it subsists and that is 
all, and it pretends to do no more. Its nobles care only 
to amuse themselves ; war and politics with them recede 
in the background ; she becomes gallant and worldly. 
With Palma the younger and Padovinano high art falls ; 
contours soften and become round; inspiration and sen- 
timent diminish, stiffness and conventionalism are about 
to rule. Artists no longer know how to portray simple 
and vigorous bodies ; Tiepolo, the last of the ceiling 
decorators, is a mannerist seeking the melodramatic in 
his religious subjects and excitement and effect in his al- 
legorical subjects, purposely upsetting columns, over- 
throwing pyramids, rending clouds and scattering his 
figures in a way that gives to his scenes the aspect of a 
volcano in eruption. With him, Canaletti, Guardi and 
Longhi, begins another art, that of genre and landscape. 



LOVE OF PLEASUEE. »0d 

The imagination declines ; they copy the petty scenes 
of actual life, and make pleasing views of surrounding 
edifices ; they imitate the dominos, the pretty faces and 
the coquettish and provoking airs of contemporary 
ladies. These are represented at their toilets, at their 
music-lessons and getting out of bed ; they paint charm- 
ing, languishing, smiling, arch and disdainful belles, 
genuine boudoir queens, whose small feet in satin shoes, 
pliant forms and delicate arms shrouded in laces fix the 
attention and secure the compliments of men. Taste 
grows refined and fastidious the same time that it be- 
comes insipid and circumscribed. But the evening of 
this fallen city is as mellow and as brilliant as a Vene- 
tian sunset. With the absence of care gaiety prevails. 
One encounters nothing but public and private fetes in 
the memoirs of their writers and in the pictures of their 
painters. At one time it is a pompous banquet in a 
superb saloon festooned with gold, with tall lustrous 
w^indows and pale crimson curtains, the doge in his 
simarre dining with the magistrates in purple robes, and 
masked guests gliding over the floor ; nothing is more 
elegant than the exquisite aristocracy of their small 
feet, their slender necks and their jaunty little three- 
cornered hats among skirts flounced with yellow or 
pearly gray silks. At another it is a regatta of gondo- 
las and we see on the sea between San-Marco and San- 
Giorgio, around the huge Bucentaur like a leviathan 
cuirassed with scales of gold, flotillas of boats parting 
the water with their steel becks. A crowd of pretty 
dominos, male and female, flutter over the pavements ; 
the sea seems to be of polished slate under a tender 
azure sky spotted with cloud-flocks while all around, as 
in a precious frame, like a fantastic border carved and 
embroidered, the Procuraties, the domes, the palaces 
and the quays thronged with a joyous multitude, encir- 
cle the great maritime sheet. A company of seignors 
who are at Pavia with Goldoni, in order to return to 



264 



VENICE. 



Venice, send for a large pleasure-barge covered with an 
awning, decked with paintings and sculpture and fur- 
nished with books and musical instruments ; there are 
ten masters and they travel only by day, leisurely and 
selecting good halting-places or, in default of these, 
lodging in the rich Benedictine monasteries. All play 
on some instrument, one on the vioHncello, three on the 
violin, two on the oboe, one on the hunting-horn and the 
other on the guitar. Goldoni, who alone is not a musi- 
cian, versifies the little occurrences of the voyage and 
recites them after the coffee. Every evening they as- 
cend on deck in order to give a concert, and the people 
on the two banks of the stream assemble in crowds wav- 
ing their handkerchiefs and applauding. On reaching 
Cremona they are welcomed with transports of joy ; 
the inhabitants honor them with a grand banquet ; the 
concert recommences, the local musicians join them and 
the night is given up to dancing. At each new evening 
halt there is the same festivity.* One cannot imagine 
a readier or more universal disposition for refined amuse- 
ments. Protestants like Misson, who chance to witness 
this kind of hfe, do not comprehend it and only make 
scandalous reports of it. The way of considering things 
there is as pagan as in the time of Polybius, for the rea- 
son that moral preoccupations and the germanic idea of 
duty could never take root there. In the days of the 
Reformation one writer already states that " there was 
never known to be one Venetian belonging to the party 
of Luther, Calvin and the rest ; all follow the doctrines 
of Epicurus and of Cremonini his interpreter, the lead- 
ing professor of philosophy at Padua, which affirm that 
the soul is engendered like that of the brute animal 
through the virtue of its own seed and accordingly that 
it is mortal. . . . And among the partisans of this doc- 
trine are found the elite of the city, and in particular 

* Memoii's of Goldoni, Part I. Cliap. XII. 



DEMORALIZATION. 265 

those who take part in the government.""^ In truth 
they never concern themselves with religion except to 
repress the Pope ; in theory and in practice, in ideas 
and in instincts, they inherit the manners, customs and 
spirit of antiquity, and their Christianity is only a name. 
Like the ancients, they were at first heroes and artists, 
and then voluptuaries and diolettanti ; in one as in the 
other case they, like the ancients, confined life to the 
present. In the eighteenth century they might be com- 
pared to the Thebans of the decadence who, leagued 
together to consume their property in common, be- 
queathed what remained of their fortunes on dying to 
the survivors at their banquets. The carnival lasts six 
months ; everybody, even the priests, the guardian of 
the capucins, the nuncio, little children, all who frequent 
the markets, wear masks. People pass by in proces- 
sions disguised in the costumes of Frenchmen, lawyers, 
gondoHers, Calabrians and Spanish soldiery, dancing 
and with musical instruments ; the crowd follows jeering 
or applauding them. There is enth'e liberty ; prince or 
artisan, all are equal ; each may apostrophize a mask. 
Pyramids of men form "pictures of strength" on the 
public squares ; harlequins in the open air perform pa- 
rades. Seven theatres are open. ImjDrovisators declaim 
and comedians improvise amusing scenes. " There is 
no cit}^ where license has such sovereign rule."t Pres- 
ident De Brosses counts here twice as many courtezans 
as at Paris, all of charming sweetness and politeness 
and some of the highest tone. "During the carnival 
there are under the Procuratie arcade as many women 
rechning as there are standing. Lately five hundred 
courtiers of love have been arrested." Judge of the 

* Discorso Aristocratico, quoted by Darn, Vol. IV. p. 171. 

f See the pictures of the Carnival by Tiepolo, the Memoirs of Gozzi, 
Goldoni and Casanova, the travels of President De Brosses, and 
especially the four German volumes of Maier, 1795 ; — in the seven- 
teenth century, Amelot de la Iloussaye, Saint-Didier, etc. 

13- 



266 YENICE. 

traffic. Opinion favors it ; a noble has Ms mistress come 
for him in a gondola on leaving the church of San-Mar- 
co ; a Procurator in a dressing-go^vn stands at his win- 
dow and publicly interchanges amorous signals with a 
well-known courtezan residing opposite to him. " A 
husband does not scruple to state in his own. house that 
he is going to dine with his mistress and his wife sends 
there whatever he orders." On the other hand ^dves 
compensate themselves ; whatever they do is tolerated. 
" F donna maritata,'' excuses everything. " It would be 
a kind of dishonor for a wife not to be in public rela- 
tionship with some man." The husband never accom- 
panies her — it would be ridiculous ; he permits a sigisbe 
to do so in his place. Sometimes this substitute is de- 
signated in the marriage contract ; he visits the lady in 
the morning when she arises, takes chocolate with her, 
assists at her toilet accompanies her everywhere and 
is her servant ; frequently, when very noble, she has 
five or six, and the spectacle is curious to see her at the 
churches giving her arm to one, her handkerchief to 
another and her gloves or mantle to another. The fash- 
ion prevails in the convents. " Every charming young 
nun has her attendant cavalier." Most of these recluses 
are immured by force and they insist on living like wo- 
men of the world. They are fascinating A^dth "their 
crisp, curly hair, white gauze kerchief projectiag over 
their brow, white camlet frock and flowers placed on 
their open breast." They receive any one they please 
and send their friends sugar-plums and bouquets ; dur- 
ing the carnival they disguise themselves as ladies and 
even as men, and thus enter the parlor and invite masked 
courtezans there. They go out of doors and in the 
work of that scapegrace Casanova we may see for what 
purpose. De Brosses states that on his arrival intrigues 
between the convents were active in order to decide 
*' which should have the honor of giving a mistress to 
the new nuncio." In truth there is no longer any family 



STATE OF THE FAMILY. 267 

life. After the seventeentli century men say that 
" marriage is purely a civil ceremony which binds opin- 
ion and not conscience." Of several brothers one alone, 
ordinarily, marries ; the embarrassment of perpetuat- 
ing the family falls on him ; the others often live under 
the same roof with him and are the sigisbes of his wife. 
Three or four combine together to support a mistress 
in common. The poor traf&c with their daughters quite 
young. " Out of ten who are abandoned" Saint-Didier 
already states, " there are nine whose mothers and aunts 
themselves negotiate the bargain." Thereupon follow 
some details which one would suppose to be taken from 
the oriental bazaars. With the dissolution of the fam- 
ily comes the abandonment of the domestic hearth. 
There is no visiting ; people meet each other at public 
or private casinos, of which some are for ladies and 
some for men. There are no home comforts ; a palace is 
a museum, a family memorial, only a resting-place for 
the night. " The Foscarini palace contains two hun- 
dred rooms filled with wealth, but not one chamber or 
chair offering a seat on account of the delicate carvings." 
Domestic authority has disappeared. " Parents dress 
their children ostentatiously as soon as they can walk." 
Boys of five or six years of age are seen wearing black 
hooded sacques trimmed with lace and figured with sil- 
ver and gold. They are spoiled to excess ; the father 
dares not scold them. When they get to be seventeen 
or eighteen he gives them mistresses ; a Procurator, 
grieving at the loss of the company of a son who passes 
his time with a courtezan goes and beseeches him to 
bring her home with him. This demorahzation extends 
from manners to dress ; people are seen attending mass 
or frequenting the public squares in slippers and in 
dressing-gowns under their black cloaks. Many of the 
indigent nobles live as parasites at the expense of the 
coffee-house keepers, of whom they are the pest. Oth- 
ers, half-ruined, pass most of the day in bed, their feet 



/5b» VENICE. 

protruding through tattered sheets, and the abbe of the 
house, meanwhile, composing for them licentious stories. 
In this corruption, following upon the death of militant 
virtues, only one living trait subsists, the love of beauty. 
Delicate, spirituelle painting of landscape and of genre 
flourishes up to the last. Music is born and soon passes 
from the church to the theatre. Four hospitals of aban- 
doned young gMs furnish so many seminaries of musi- 
cians and of incomparable singers. Almost every even- 
ing, there is on the banks of the Grand Canal an " acad- 
emy" with music, and "with an inconceivable gather- 
ing," of people who crowd to it in gondolas and along 
the quays in order to enjoy it. At the theatre the light 
capricious fancy of Gozzi throws over their misery a 
diaphanous tissue of golden reveries and diverting gro- 
tesques. Noble races are beautiful even in ruin ; the 
poetic imagination which illuminated the vigorous years 
of their youth accompanies them even to the brink of 
the grave in order to warm and to color their last mo- 
ments, and this privilege saves their decrepitude as well 
as their adult age from the only two unpardonable 
vices, bitterness and vulgarity. 

The Lido. — One can do nothing here but dream. 
And yet dream is not the proper word since it simply 
denotes a wandering of the brain, a coming and going 
of vague ideas ; if one dreams at Venice it is through 
sensations and not through ideas. For the hundredth 
time to-day I have remarked, looking west, the peculiar 
color of the water in the vicinity of the sand-banks, 
consisting of the dun tints of Florentine bronze crawl- 
ing with sinuous gleams of light. The sunset glow is 
depicted on it and is there transformed into tones of 
reddish or greenish orange. Occasionally the tint be- 
comes auroral like silk drapery inflated and tossed by 
a current of air. Beyond, the infinite and imperceptible 
motion of the great blue surface mingles, unites and ex- 
tends between sky and sea a network of radiant white- 



THE LIDO. 269 

ness ; the boat swims in light ; only around it is seen 
the mingled green and azure, always changing, always 
the same. 

In an hour we reach the Lido, a long bank of sand 
protecting Venice from the open sea. In the middle is 
a church with a village and, around it, gardens pali- 
saded with straw and filled with young fruit-trees, all 
in full bloom. On the left runs an avenue of older 
trees, revived, however, with the early spring ; their 
round tops are already white Uke bridal bouquets. On 
advancing a hundred yards the broad sea appears, no 
longer motionless and converted into a lake as at Yen- 
ice but wild and roaring with the eternal resonance of 
its flux and reflux and the dash of its foaming surge. 
No one is visible on this long sandy bar ; the most one 
sees at intervals, on turning an angle, is the gray capote 
of a sentinel. No human sound. I walk along in 
silence and gradually find myself enveloped in the 
grand monotonous voice of nature; each step is im- 
printed on the wet sand ; the shells crackle under the 
crushing feet ; hundreds of little crabs run away 
obliquely and when caught by the wave seek refuge in 
the ground. Meanwhile night comes on, and in front 
to the east, all grows dark. In the deepening obscurity 
two or three white sails are still discernible ; these disap- 
pear ; the green tones of the water become darker and 
darker until dro^Tied in the universal night ; from 
time to time a single wave breaks its snowy crest and 
falls with a feeble tremor upon the beach. On all 
sides, like the dull clamor of distant hounds, rises a 
hoarse and infinite roar which in the absence of other 
sensations, menaces the soul with its threats, reviving 
the idea, lost at Venice, of the indomitable and malevo- 
lent power of the sea. 

On returning, and toward sunset, the sky seems like 
a brasier, and the rampart of houses, towers and 
churches rays the ruddy glow with opaque blackness. 



270 



VENICE. 



It is actually the image of a vast conflagration, like 
those occurring in the upheavals of the globe when 
eruptions of lava have buried the vegetation of ages. 
It seems to be a furnace let loose and flaming yonder 
out of sight, and yet throwing up volleys of sparks in 
sight with the sombre scarlet of still blazing trunks 
and of the smothered and deadened brands amassed 
by the crumbling and crash of mighty forests. Their 
funereal shadows lengthen out infinitely on the ruddy 
waves and vanish in the night abeady covering the 
heaving sea with its pall. 

April 29. — I promised to write you something about 
Venetian painting, and yet day after day I defer it. 
There are too many great works, and the work is too 
original ; one experiences here too many emotions and 
lives too bountifully and too fast ; it is like living in a 
green and primitive forest; it is much easier to sit 
down and gaze than to seek for a path and embrace 
the whole ; you resign yourself and grow indolent, and 
are always repeating that this or that must be seen 
over and over again. You are at last wearied out body 
and soul and say to yourself, to-morrow. The next 
day a fresh idea comes — for example, this morning at 
daybreak I ascended the tower of San-Marco. 

From the top of this tower you see Yenice and the 
entire lagune ; at this height man's works never seem 
to be more than those of beavers ; nature reappears, 
just as she is, sole subsistent, vast, scarcely defaced or 
spotted here and there with our petty ephemeral life. 
All is sand and sea ; only one grand flat plane is visible 
barred to the north by a wall of snow-peaks, a sort of 
intermediary domain between the dry and the fluid 
element, an infecund territory varied by neutral sands 
and lustrous pools. Eed islets, washed by the falling 
tide, send forth vague slaty reflections. All around 
are tortuous canals and motionless surfaces mingling 
the infinite confusion of their shapes and the metallic 



YIEW FEOM SAN- MARCO. 271 

niellos of tlieir leaden waters. It is a desert, a strange 
dead desert. Tliere is no life save a flotilla of boats 
returning to port and oscillating beneath tlieir orange 
sails. From time to time, beyond the Lido, a jet of sun- 
shine piercing the clouds casts on the broad sea a bril- 
liant ray like a flashing sword severing a sombre 
mantle. One may remain here for hours, indifferent to 
all human interests, before the uniform dialogue of two 
grand objects, the concave sky and the flat earth, occu- 
pying space and the field of being. Between two troops 
of blonde clouds rushes a breath of sea-air. They pass 
in turn before the thin crescent moon which indefat- 
igably buries her blade in their mass like a scythe in a 
field of ripened grain. 



BOOK VI 



VENETIAN ART. 



CHAPTEE I. 

CLIMATE.-TEMPEKAMENT.— ART, AN ABSTRACT OF LIFE.-MAN IN 
THE INTERVAL BETWEEN HEROIC AND DEGENERATE ERAS. 

Ajwil 30, 1864. — I find it more difficult to speak of 
Venetian painters than of any others. Before their 
pictures one has no disposition to analyze and discuss ; 
if it is done it is an effort. The eyes enjoy and that 
is all ; they enjoy the same as those of the Yenetians 
of the sixteenth century ; for Yenice was not a literary 
or critical city like Florence, painting there being simply 
the complement of surrounding voluptuousness, the 
decoration of a banquet-hall or of an architectural 
alcove. In order to explain this to himseK a man 
must withdraw to a distance and close his eyes, and 
wait until his sensations become subdued ; the mind 
then does its office. Here are three or four prelim- 
inary ideas ; on such a subject a man divines and 
sketches but does not perfect. 

Yenice is not only a distinct city differing from other 
cities in Italy, free from the beginning and for thirteen 
hundred years, but again a distinct community differing 
from all others, having a soil, a sky, a climate, and an 
atmosphere of its own. Compared with Florence, 
which is the other centre, it is an aquatic world by the 
side of a terrestrial world. Man here has not the same 
field of vision. Instead of clear contours, sober tones 
and motionless planes the eye ever finds, in the first 



ATMOSPHERIC PECULIAEITIES. -''> 

place, a moving and brilliant surface, a varied and uni- 
form reflection of light, an exquisite union of varied and 
melting tones prolonged without fixed limit into those 
in contact with them ; and then a soft vapory haze due 
to an incessant evaporation from the water enveloping 
all forms, rendering distances blue and filling the sky 
with magnificent clouds ; again the contrast wdiich the 
hard, intense and lustrous color of the water every- 
where opposes to the subdued and stony hue of 
the edifices it bathes. In a dr}^ country the eye is im- 
pressed by the line, in a wet one by the spot. This is 
very evident in Holland and in Flanders. The eye 
there is not arrested by delicacies of contour half- 
blurred by the intermediate moist atmosphere ; it fixes 
itself on harmonies of color enlivened by the universal 
freshness and graduated by the variable density of am- 
bient vapor. In the same way at Venice, and, save 
the differences which separate this sea-green element 
and these empurpled sands from the dingy mire and 
sooty sky of Amsterdam or of Antwerp, the eye, as at 
Antw^erp and Amsterdam, becomes colorist. Proof of 
this may be found in the early architecture of the 
Venetians, in these stripes of porphyry, serpentine and 
precious marbles incrusting their palaces ; in the som- 
bre purple starred with gold filling San-Marco; in 
their original and persistent taste for the lustrous 
tints and luminous embroideries of mosaic and in the 
vivacity and brilliancy of their oldest national paintings. 
Vivarini, Carpaccio and Crivelli, and later John 
Bellini, already announce the splendor of the coming 
masters. These almost always used oil, finding fi-esco 
too dull ; and Vasari like a true Florentine, reproaches 
Titian for painting " immediately from nature and not 
making a preparatory design, imagining that the only 
and best w^a}^ to obtain a good design is to use color at 
once without previously studying contours with a 
pencil on paper." 



3'^4 VENETIAN ART. 

A second reason and a stronger one is that besides 
the surroundings of a man the climate modifies his 
temperament and his instincts. Physiologists have 
only glanced at this truth, but it is plain to all who 
travel.*^ The living body is a condensed, organized gas, 
plunged into the atmosphere and constantly wasting 
and renewing itself, in such a way that man forms a 
portion of his milieu incessantly renewed by his milieu. 
According to the gTeater or less difficulty or rapidity of 
the escape or absorption of the entire machine so is 
its tension and its activity different; cerebral opera- 
tions, like the rest, depend on the ease and the ra- 
pidity of the current of which, hke the rest, they form 
a wave. A northern man, for instance, absorbs and 
wastes two or three times as much as a southern man, 
and consequently his sensibility, that is to say the sud- 
denness and vehemence of his emotions, are two or 
three times less great. Compare a peasant or a horse 
of Friesland in Holland with a peasant or a horse of 
Berri in France ; a Lombard Italian with a Calabrian 
Italian and a Russian with an Arab.t We are as yet 
ignorant of the precise laws which apportion to the 
colder or moister atmosphere, alimentation, respira- 
tion, muscular force, capacity for emotion and genera- 
tion of diverse orders of ideas ; but it is plain that such 
laws exist. Everywhere, and powerfully, climate, 
physical temperament and moral structure interdepend 
like three successive links of a chain ; whoever dis- 
turbs the fiirst, disturbs the second and, consequently. 



* Experiments have been made with a view to ascertain the effect 
of a carnivorous diet. French workmen performing half as much 
labor as English workmen were fed on meat ; at the end of a year 
their capacity for labor, that is to say, their powers of attention and 
their muscular energy, had doubled. 

f The Duke of Wellington says : "When a French army has the 
necessary, a Spanish army has too much and the English army is 
dying with hunger." 



VENETIAN SENSUOUSNESS. 275 

the third. Venice and the valley of the Po are the 
Netherlands of Italy ; hence it is that temperament 
and character are here transformed as they are in the 
Netherlands of the north. We find here, the same as in 
Flanders, bright rosy carnations, blonde and red hair, 
soft, pulpy and slightly flabby flesh in contrast with 
the black hair, energetic spareness, noble sculptural 
features and firm muscles of the Italians of central 
Italy. We find here as in Flanders, a passionate 
fondness for sensuous enjoyment, exquisite appreciation 
of material resources, and an inferior hterary or spec- 
ulative spirit, forming a contrast to the subtle, argumen- 
tative, delicate intellect tending to purism, running 
through all the lives and writings of the Florentines.* 
In the beginning, architecture so gay and so little clas- 
sic, voluptuous tastes after the fifteenth century,t 
later, a publicity of pleasure, the six months carnival 
and registered and innumerable courtezans, music a 
state institution, at all times magnificence of costumes 
and of festivals, pompous, variegated dalmatics, em- 
broidered silk robes, a prodigality of gold and dia- 
monds, constant contact with oriental magnificence and 
fancy, fixed toleration in religious matters and allow- 
able indifference in political matters, exuberant pros- 
perity, voluptuousness encouraged, supineness pro- 
scribed, all announce the same primitive and leading 
disposition, that is to say an aptitude for imbuing 
sensual life with poesy and a talent for combining 
enjoyment with beauty. It is this national naturalness 
which the painters represent in their types ; this it is 
which they flatter in their coloring ; its effects and 
surroundings are displayed by them in their silks, 

^ The Florentines called the Venetians grossolani. 

f Antonella da Messina, says Vasari, went to reside in Venice, in 
which city he introduced oil-painting. He preferred this city and 
v/as much esteemed and caressed by the nobles, " being a person 
much addicted to pleasure and licentiousness." 



^^Q VENETIAN AET. 

velvets and pearls, in their balustrades, their colon- 
nades and their gildings. It is more clearly seen in 
them than in itself. They have disengaged, defined 
and incorporated it in a visible shape. Great artists, 
everywhere, are the heralds and interpreters of their 
community ; Jordsens, Grayer, Rubens in Flanders and 
Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese in Venice. Their in- 
stinct and their intuition make them naturalists, psy- 
chologists, historians and philosophers ; they ruminate 
over the idea constituting their race and their epoch, 
and the broad and involuntary sympathy forming their 
genius brings together and organizes in their minds in 
true proportions the infinite and commingled elements 
of the society in which they are comprised. Their tact 
goes farther than science, and the ideal being they 
fetch to light is the most powerful summary, the live- 
liest concentrated image, the most complete and defi- 
nite figure of the real beings amongst whom they have 
dwelt. They again seize the mould in which nature 
has cast her objects and which, charged with a refrac- 
tory metal, has only furnished rude and defective 
forms ; they empty it and pour their metal into it, a 
more supple metal, and they heat their own furnace, 
and the statue that issues from the clay in their hands 
represents for the first time the veritable contours of a 
mould which preceding castings, crusted Avith scoria 
and traversed with fissures, could not express. 

Let us now consider the moment of their appearance. 
In all times and in every land that which inspires 
works of art is a certain complex and mixed condition 
of things encountered in the soul when placed between 
two orders of sentiments : it is in train to abandon the 
love of the grand for the love of the agreeable ; but in 
passing fi'om one to the other it combines both. It is 
necessary still to possess the taste for the grand, that is 
to say, for noble forms and vigorous passions, without 
which works of art would be only pretty. It is neces- 



ANCIENT HEROISM. 277 

sary to have already possessed a taste for the agreeable, 
that is to say, a craving for pleasure and interest in 
decoration, without which the mind would concern 
itself only with actions and never delight in works of 
art. Hence the transient and precious flower is only 
seen to bloom at the confluence of two epochs, be- 
twixt heroic and epicurean habits, at the moment 
when man, terminating some long and painful war, or 
foundation, or discovery, begins to take repose and look 
about him, meditating over the pleasure of- decorating 
his great bare tenement whose foundations his own 
hands have laid and whose walls they have erected. 
Before this it would have been too soon ; absorbed with 
labor he could not think of enjoyment ; a little time 
after it would be too late, as, dreaming of enjoyment 
only, he no longer conceives of an effort. Between the 
two is found the unique moment, lasting longer or 
shorter according as the transformation of the soul is 
more or less prompt, and in which, men, still strong, 
impetuous and capable of sublime emotion and of 
bold enterprise, suffer the tension of their will to relax 
in order to magnificently enliven the senses and the in- 
tellect. 

Such is the change effected in Venice, as in the rest 
of Italy, between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 
The Chiogga campaign is the last act of the old heroic 
drama ; there, as in the best days of the ancient repub- 
lics a besieged people is seen to save itself against all 
hope, artisans equipping vessels, a Pisani conqueror 
undergoing imprisonment and only released to renew 
the victory, a Carlo Zeno^ surviving forty wounds, and 
a doge of seventy years of age ; a Contarini, who makes 
a vow not to leave his vessel so long as the enemy's 
fleet is uncaptured, thirty families, apothecaries, grocers, 
vintners, tanners admitted among the nobles, a bravery, 

* He died in 1418. He lived tlie life of one of Plutarch's characters. 



378 VENETIAN ART. 

a public spirit like that of Athens under Themistocles 
and of Kome under Fabius Cunctator. If, from this 
time forth, the inward fire abates we still feel its warmth 
for many long years, longer kept up than in the rest of 
Italy, and sometimes demonstrating its power by sud- 
den outbursts. Venice is always an independent city, 
a cherished soil when Florence, Rome and Bologna are 
nothing more than museums for the idle and for ama- 
teurs. A subjected people are still found to be citizens 
on occasion ; on Louis XII. and Maximilian becoming 
masters of the Venetian possessions on the mainland 
the peasants rebel in the name of St. Mark and the 
volunteers, in spite of the doge, retake Padua. On 
Pope Paul V. attempting to impose his will on Venice 
the Venetian clergy remain patriotic and the people 
hoot away the papalistic monks." On the spreading of 
the ecclesiastic inquisition over Italy the Venetian sen- 
ate causes Paolo Sarpi to write against the Council of 
Trent, tolerates on its soil protestants, Arminians, Ma- 
hometans, Jews, and Greeks, leaves them in possession 
of their temples and permits the interment of heretics 
in the churches. The nobles, on their side, are always 
ready to fight. During the whole of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, even up to the seventeenth and beyond, we see 
them in Dalmatia, in the Morea, over the entire Medi- 
terranean, defending the soil inch by inch against the 
infidels. The garrison of Famagouste yields only to 
faminet and its governor, Bragadino, burnt ahve, is 
a hero of ancient days. At the battle of Lepanto the 
Venetians alone furnish one half of the christian fleet. 
Thus on all sides, and notwithstanding their gradual 
decline, peril, energy, love of country, all, in brief, 
which constitutes or sustains the grand life of the soul 
here subsists, whilst throughout the peninsula foreign 
dominion, clerical oppression and voluptuous or aca- 

* " Siamo Veneziaiii e poi cristiani." f 1571. 



DECLINE OF THE REPUBLIC. 279 

demical inertia reduces man to the system of the 
antechamber, the subtleties of dilettantism and the 
babble of sonnets. 

But if the human spring is not broken at Venice, it 
is seen insensibly losing its elasticity. The govern- 
ment, changed into a suspicious despotism, elects a 
Mocenigo doge, a shameless speculator profiting on the 
public distress, instead of that Charles Zeno who had 
saved the country ; it holds Zeno prisoner two years 
and intrusts the armies on the mainland to condottieri ; 
it is tied up in the hands of three inquisitors, provokes 
accusations, practices secret executions and commands 
the people to confine themselves to the indulgences of 
pleasure. On the other hand luxury arises. About 
the year 1400 the houses "were quite small;" but a 
thousand nobles were enumerated in Venice possessing 
from four to seventy thousand ducats rental, while 
three thousand ducats were sufficient to purchase a 
palace. Henceforth this great wealth is no longer to 
be employed in enterprises and in self-devotion, but 
in pomp and magnificence. In 1495 Commines admires 
*'the grand canal, the most beautiful street I think, in 
the world, and with the best houses ; the houses are 
very grand, high and of excellent stone, — and these 
have been built within a century. All have fronts of 
white marble, which comes from Istria a hundred miles 
away, and yet many more great pieces of porphyry and 
of serpentine on them : inside they have, most of them-, 
at least two chambers with gilded ceilings, rich screens 
of chimneys with carved marble, the bedsteads gilded 
and the ostevents painted and gilded and well furnished 
within." On his arrival twenty-five gentlemen attired 
in silk and scarlet come to meet him ; they conduct him 
to a boat decked with crimson silk ; " it is the most 
triumphant city that I ever saw." Finally, whilst the 
necessity of pleasure grows the spirit of enterprise 
diminishes ; the passage of the Cape in the beginning 



»«" VENETIAN AKT. 

of the sixteenth century places the commerce of Asia 
in the hands of the Portuguese ; on the Mediterranean 
and the Atlantic the financial measures of Charles Y. 
joined to bad usage by the Turks, render abortive the 
great maritime caravans which the state dispatches 
yearly between Alexandria and Bruges. In respect to 
industrial matters, the hampered artisans, watched and 
cloistered in their country, cease to perfect their arts 
and allow foreign competitors to surpass them in pro- 
cesses and in furnishing supplies to the world. Thus, 
on all sides, the capacity for activity becomes lessened 
and the desire for enjoyment greater without one 
entirely effacing the other, but in such a way that, both 
commingling, they produce that ambiguous state of 
mind similar to a mixed temperature which is neither 
too mild nor too severe and in which the arts are 
generated. Indeed, it is from 1454 to 1572, between 
the institution of state inquisitors and the battle of 
Lepanto, between the accomplishment of internal des- 
potism and the last of the great outward victories, that 
the brilliant productions of Venetian art appear. 
John Bellini was born in 1426, Giorgone died in 1511, 
Titian in 1576, Veronese in 1572 and Tintoretto in 
1594. In this interval of one hundred and fifty years 
this warrior city, this mistress of the Mediterranean, 
this queen of commerce and of industry became a 
casino for masqueraders and a den of courtezans. 



CHAPTEE II. 

THE EARLY PAINTERS.— JOHN BELLINI.— CARPACCIO.-^TINETIAN SO- 
CIETY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.— UNRESTRAINED VOLUPTU- 
OUSNESS.— DOMESTIC ESTABLISHMENT OP ARETINO.— SENTBIENT 
OF ART.— COLOR INSTINCTS. 

The Academy of the Fine Arts contains a collection 
of the works of the earliest painters. A large picture 
in compartments, of 1380, quite barbarous, shows the 
first steps taken : here, as elsewhere, the new art issued 
from Byzantine traditions. It appears late, much 
later than in precocious and intelligent Tuscany. We 
encounter, indeed, in the fourteenth century, a Semit- 
ecolo, a Guariento, weak disciples of the school which 
Giotto founded at Padua ; but, in order to find, the first 
national painters, we must come down to the middle of 
the following century. At this time there lived at 
Murano a family of artists called the Yivarini. With 
the oldest of these, Antonio, we already detect the 
rudiments of Venetian taste, some venerable beards 
and bald heads, fine draperies with rosy and green 
tones, little angels almost plump and Madonnas with 
full cheeks. After him his brother Bartolomeo, edu- 
cated undoubtedly in the Paduan school, inclines paint- 
ing for a time to dry and bony forms.^^ With him, how- 
ever, as with all the rest, a feeling for rich colors is 
already perceptible. On leaving this antechamber of 
art the eyes keep a full and strong sensation which 
other vestibules of art, at Sienna and at Florence, do 
not give, and, on continuing, we find the same sensa- 
tion, still richer, before the masters of this half-legible 
era, John Bellini and Carpaccio. 

* A Virgin of 1473, at Santa Maria Formosa. 



282 



VENETIAN AET. 



I have just examined at the Frari a picture by John 
Bellini which, like those of Perugino, seems to me a 
masterpiece of genuine religious art. At the rear of a 
chapel, over the altar, within a small piece of golden 
architecture, sits the Yirgin on a throne in a grand 
blue mantle. She is good and simple Hke a simple, in- 
nocent peasant girl. At her feet two little angels in 
short vests seem to be choir-boys and their plump 
infantile thighs are of the finest and healthiest flesh- 
color. On the two sides, in the compartments, are two 
couples of saints, impassible figures in the garbs of 
monk and bishop, erect for eternity in hieratic attitude, 
actual forms reminding one of the sunburnt fisher- 
men of the Adriatic. These personages have all lived ; 
the believer kneeling before them recognized features 
encountered by him in his boat and on the canals, the 
ruddy brown tones of visages tanned by the sea-breezes, 
the broad and pure carnation of young girls reared in 
a moist atmosphere, the damask cope of the prelate 
heading the processions, and the little naked legs of 
the children fishing for crabs at sunset. He could not 
avoid having faith in them ; truth so local and perfect 
paved the way to illusion. But the apparition was one 
of a superior and august world. These personages do 
not move ; their faces are in repose and their eyes fixed 
like those of figures seen in a dream. A painted niche, 
decked with red and gold, recedes back of the Virgin 
like the extension of an imaginary realm ; painted 
architecture in this way imitates and completes actual 
architecture, while the golden Host on the marble, 
crowned with rays and a glory, displays the entrance 
into the supernatural world disclosing itself behind her. 

On regarding other pictures by John Bellini, and 
those of his contemporaries in the Academy, it is evi- 
dent that painting in Yenice, while following a path of 
its own, ran the same course as in the rest of Italy. 
It issues here, as elsewhere, from missals and mosaics, 



CARPACCIO. 283 

and corresponds at first wholly to cliristian emotions ; 
then, by degrees, the sentiment of a beautiful corporeal 
life introduces into the altar-frames vigorous and healthy 
bodies borrowed from surrounding nature, and we won- 
der at seeing placid expressions and religious physiogno- 
mies on flourishing forms circulating with youthful blood 
and sustained by an intact temperament. It is the con- 
fluence of two ages and of two spirits, one christian 
and subsiding and the other pagan and about to become 
ascendant. At Venice , however, over these general 
resemblances special traits are delineated. The per- 
sonages are more closely copied from life, less trans- 
formed by the classic or mystic sentiment, less pure 
than at Perugia, less noble than at Florence ; they 
appeal less to the intellect or to the heart and more to 
the senses. They are more quickly recognized as men, 
and give greater pleasure to the eye. Powerful, lively 
tones color their muscles and faces ; living flesh is 
already soft on the shoulders, and on children's thighs ; 
open landscapes recede in order to enforce the dark 
tints of the figures ; the saints gather around the Vir- 
gin in various attitudes unknown to the monotonous 
perceptions of other primitive schools. At the height 
of its fervor and faith the national spirit, fond of diversity 
and the agreeable allows a smile to glimmer. Nothing 
is more striking in this respect than the eight figures 
by Carpaccio relating to St. Ursula. * Everything is 
here ; and first the awkwardness of the feudal image- 
fabricator. He ignores one half of the landscape, and 
likewise the nude : his rocks bristling with trees, seem to 
issue from a psalter; frequently his trees are as if cut 
out of polished sheet-iron ; his ten thousand crucified 
martj^rs on a mountain are grotesque like the figures of 
an ancient mystery ; he did not, evidently, live in Flor- 
ence, nor study natural objects with Paolo Uccello, nor 

* Pictiu-es of from 1490 to 1515. 



284 



VENETIAN AET. 



human members and muscles with Pollaiolo. On the 
other hand we find in him the chastest of mediaeval 
figures, and that extreme finish, that perfect truthful- 
ness, that bloom of the christian conscience which the 
following age, more rude and sensual, is to trample on 
in its vehemences. The saint and her affianced, under 
their great drooping blonde tresses, are grave and 
tender, like the characters of a legend. We see her, 
at one time asleep and receiving from the angel the 
announcement of her martyrdom, now kneeling with 
her spouse under the benediction of the pope, now 
translated in glory above a field of crowded heads. 
In another picture she appears with St. Anne and two 
aged saints embracing each other ; one cannot imagine 
figures more pious and more serene; she, pale and 
gentle, her head slightly bent, holds a banner in her 
beautiful hands and a green palm-branch; her silky 
hair flows down over the virginal blue of h^r long robe 
and a royal mantle envelops her form with its golden 
confusion ; she is indeed a saint, the candor, humility 
and delicacy of the middle ages entirely permeating 
her attitude and expression. Such is the age, and such 
the country ! These paintings provide scenes of social 
significance and rich decorations. The artist, as at a 
later period his great successors, displays architecture, 
fabrics, arcades, tapestried halls, vessels, processions 
of characters, grand bedizened and lustrous robes, all 
in petty proportions but ui brilliancy and in diversity 
anticipating future productions as an illuminated man- 
uscript anticipates a picture. And in order fully to 
show the transformation under way he himself once 
attains to perfect art ; we see him emerging from his 
primitive dryness in order to enter on the new and de- 
finitive style. In the middle of the grand hall is a " Pre- 
sentation of the boy Jesus" which one would not be- 
lieve to be by him, were it not signed by his hand (1510). 
Under a marble portico incrusted with mosaics of gold 



PATKICIAN SENTIMENT. 285 

appear personages almost of the size of life, in admirable 
relief, exquisitely finished, and perfect in composition 
and amidst the most beautiful gradations of light and 
shadow ; the Virgin, followed bj two young females, 
leads her child to the aged Simeon ; beneath, three 
angels play on the viol and the lute. Save a little 
rigidity in the heads of the men, and in some of the 
folds of the drapery, the archaic manner has disap- 
peared ; nothing remains of it but the infinite charm 
of moral refinement and benignity, while, for the first 
time, the semi-nude bodies of little children show 
the beauty of flesh traversed and impregnated with 
light. With this picture we cross the threshold of 
high art, and, around Carpaccio, his young contem- 
poraries, Giorgone and Titian, have already surpassed 
him. 

The Masters. — When, in order to comprehend the 
milieu in which an art has flourished, we strive, accord- 
ing to the documents at hand, to form some idea of the 
life of a patrician at Yenice during the first half of the 
sixteenth century, we encounter in him first, and in the 
foremost rank, a spirit of haughty security and gran- 
deur. He regards himself as the successor of the 
ancient Romans, and holds that, except in conquests, 
he has surpassed, and does still surpass them."^ 
" Among all the provinces of the noble Roman empire 
Italy is queen," and in the Italy overcome by the 
Caesars, and devastated by the barbarians, Yenice is 
the sole city that remained free. Abroad she has just 
recovered the provinces on the mainland wrested from 
her by Louis XII. Her lagunes and her alliances pro- 
tect her against the emperor. The Turk fails in his 
encroachments on her domain, and Candia, Cyprus, the 
Cyclades, Corfu and the coasts of the Adriatic held by 
her garrisons, extend her sovereignty to the extremities 

* Douati Gianotti, La Repuhlica di Venezia (clialo<]jues). 



^^^ VENETIAN ABT. 

of the sea. Witliin, " she has neyer been more perfect." 
In no state in the world do we see " better laws, better 
preservation of order, more complete concord," and in 
this admirable system, which is unique in the uni- 
verse, "she does not lack valorous and magnanimous 
souls." With the dignified coolness of a grand seignor, 
Marco Trifone Gabriello regards the prosperity of the 
glorious city as due to its aristocratic government, and 
" the suppression of the council developed it up to a 
point of grandeur not previously reached." According 
to him all citizens excluded from suffrage are only 
inferior people, boatmen, subjects and domestics. If, 
in the course of events, any of these become wealthy 
and prominent it is due to the tolerance of the state 
which gathers them under its wing; still, in this day 
they are protected, they have no rights; clients and 
plebeians they rejoice in the patronage awarded to 
them. The sole legitimate rulers are "three thousand 
gentlemen, seigneurs of the city and of the entire state 
on land and on sea." The state belongs to them ; " as 
formerly with the Roman patricians they hold public 
affairs in fee, and the wisdom of their rule confirms the 
stability of their right." Thereupon the " magnifico" 
describes with patriotic complacency the economy of 
the constitution and the resources of the city, the order 
of the functions and the election of magistrates, the 
fifteen hundred thousand crowns of public revenue, the 
new fortifications on land and the armament in the 
arsenals. In gravity, proud spiritedness and nobleness 
of discourse one might take him for a citizen of anti- 
quity. In fact his friends compare him to Atticus ; he, 
however, courteously declines the title, declaring that 
if, like Atticus, he has withdrawn from public affairs it 
is for a different motive and wholly creditable to his 
city, since the retirement of Atticus was excused by 
the powerlessness of worthy citizens, and the decline 
of Eome, whereas his own is authorized by the su- 



ABETINO. 



387 



perabundance of capable men and the prosperity of 
Yenice. Thus does the dialogue proceed in terms of 
noble courteousness, in fine periods and with sub- 
stantial arguments ; the apartment of Bembo at 
Padua is the theatre for this, and the reader may im- 
agine these lofty Eenaissance halls, decorated with 
busts, manuscripts and vases, in which the grandeurs 
of paganism and of antique patriotism reappeared 
with the eloquence, the purity and the urbanity of 
Cicero. 

How do our " magnifici" amuse themselves ? Some 
of them are serious I can readily believe, but the pre- 
vailing sentiment at Yenice is not a rigid one. At 
this time the most prominent personage is Aretino, 
tlie son of a courtezan, born in a hospital, parasite by 
profession, and a professor of black-mail, who, by 
means of calumnies and sycophancies, of luxurious 
sonnets and obscene dialogues, becomes the arbiter of 
reputations, extorts seventy thousand crowns from 
European magnates, calls himself "the scourge of 
princes" and succeeds in passing off his inflated effemi- 
nate style as one of the marvels of the human intellect. 
He has no property and lives like a seignor on the 
money bestowed, or on the presents showered, on him. 
At early morning, in his palace on the Grand Canal, 
solicitors and flatterers fill his antechamber. " So 
many seignors,""^ he says, "importune me with their 
visits that my stairs are worn with the friction of their 
feet like the Capitol pavement with the wheels of 
triumphant chariots. I doubt if Kome ever saw so 
great a medley of nations and languages as that which 
is visible under my roof. Turks, Jews, Indians, 
Frenchmen, Spaniards and Germans, all resort to it. 
As to the Italians imagine how many there must be ! 
I say nothing of the vulgar ; it is impossible to find me 

* Lettre, Vol. I. p. 206. He came to Venice iu 1527. 



5500 VENETIAN ART. 

free of monks and priests .... I am secretary for 
everybody." Nobles, prelates and artists pay court to 
him ; tliey fetch him antique medals, gold collars, 
velvet mantles, pictures, purses of five hundred crowns 
and the diplomas of Academies. His bust of white 
marble, his portrait by Titian, the medals of bronze, 
silver and gold that represent him display to the gaze 
of his visitors his brutal and impudent mask. We see 
him on these crowned, clad in long imperial robes, sit- 
ting on an elevated throne and receiving the homage 
and gifts of the surrounding people. He is popular 
and sets the fashion. " I see," he says, " my effigy on 
the facades of palaces ; I encounter it again on comb- 
boxes, on mirror ornaments, on majolica ware like that 
of Alexander, Caesar or Scipio. Moreover I assure 
you that at Murano there is a certain kind of crystal 
vase called an Aretino. A breed of horses is called 
Aretino, in commemoration of one I received from 
Pope Clement and which I gave to Duke Frederick. 
The stream bathing one side of the house which I 
occupy on the Grand Canal is baptized with the name 
of Aretino. People refer to the style of Aretino, — how 
the pedants burst with vexation ! Three of my cham- 
bermaids or housekeepers, having left my service to 
set up for ladies, call themselves Aretines." Thus 
protected and fed by public favor he enjoys himself, 
not furtively and delicately, but openly and ostenta- 
tiously. " Let us eat, drink and be merry, and .... like 
liberal men!" I am a hberal man, says he often, 
which signifies that he does what he pleases and pam- 
pers all his senses. At this epoch the nerves are still 
rude and the muscles vigorous ; only toward the end 
of the seventeenth century does society incline to insi- 
pidity and roguery. At this time all desires are 
gluttonous rather than dainty ; in the Yenuses which 
the great masters undrape on their canvases the torso 



AEETINO. 289 

is masculine and the eye audacious ; voluptuousness, 
rank and open, leaves no place for polisli or for senti- 
mentality. Aretino liad been a vagabond and soldier, 
and his pleasures smacked of the life he had led. 
There was great carousing under his roof ; he had 
"twenty-two women in his house, and frequently with 
infants at the breast." Bevelling and disorder were 
constant. He has the generosity of a robber, and if he 
takes he lets others take. " Double my pension of five 
hundred crowns — even if I had a thousand times as 
much — I would always be straitened. Everybody 
comes to me, as if I w^ere custodian of the royal 
treasury. Let a poor girl be confined and my house 
pays the expenses. Let any one be put in prison and 
the cost falls on me. Soldiers without an equipment, 
unfortunate strangers, and quantities of stray cavaliers 
come to my house to refit. It is not two months since 
a young man wounded near my residence, w^as brought 
into one of mj apartments." He is plundered by his 
domestics. All is confusion in this free tenement ; 
vases, busts, sketches, caps and mantles presented to 
him, Cyprus wine, birds, hares and rabbits sent to him, 
melons and grapes that he himself buys for the even- 
ing entertainment. He eats well, drinks better and 
makes his marble halls ring with his jovial sallies. 
Partridges arrive ; " roasted, as soon as caught, I 
stopped my hymn in honor of hares and began at once 
to sing the praises of the winged ! My good fiiend 
Titian, bestowing a glance on these savory morsels, be- 
gan to sing in duet w^ith me the 3Iagnificat I had al- 
ready commenced." To this music of the jaws is added 
another. Tlie famous songstress Franceschina is one of 
his guests ; he kisses " her beautiful hands, two charm- 
ing robbers which take not alone people's purses but 
their hearts." " It is my wish," says he, " that where 
my dishes prove unsavory there may the sweetness of 

13 



290 YENETIAN AET. 

yonr voice appear." Courtezans are at home in his dom- 
icile. He has written books^ for their use and taught 
them the accomplishments of their profession. He 
receives them, pets them, writes to them and recruits 
them. In the morning, after having got rid of his vis- 
itors, when he does not go to amuse himself in the 
studios of Titian and Sansovino, he visits grisettes, 
gives them "a few sous" and has them sew "handker- 
chiefs, sheets and shirts in order that they may earn 
their living." Thus occupied he collects and installs 
under his roof six young women who are called 
Aretines, a seraglio without walls where pranks, quar- 
rels and imbroglios make the most remarkable uproar. 
He lives in this way thirty years, sometimes horse- 
whipped but always pensioned, familiar with the 
highest, receiving from a bishop blue morocco shoes for 
one of his mistresses, and a companion of Titian, of 
Tintoretto and of Sansovino. And better still, Aretino 
founds a school ; he has imitators as parasitical and as 
obscene as himself, Doni, Dolce, Mcolo Francp his 
secretary and enemy, the author of the Priapea and 
who ended his career at Kome on the gibbet. Thus 
flourished at Yenice a literature of buffoonery and of 
lewdness which, tempered by the gallantries of Para- 
bosco, repels a superior one with the sonnets of Baffo. 
Judge of readers by the book and of guests by the 
mansion. With this glimpse we partially recognize the 
inner character of men of whom the painters have 
transmitted to us the outward image ; here it is that 
we obtain the principal traits explanatory of contem- 
porary art, the haughty grandeur suitable to the undis- 
puted masters of such a republic, the brutal and teem- 
ing energy surviving the ages of virile activity, the 
magnificent and impudent sensuality which, devel- 
oped by accumulated wealth and by unquestioned 

* Kagionamenti. — Letters to Zufolina and Zafetta. 



ARETINO. 291 

security, expands and revels in the full brightness of 
sunshine. 

One point remains, the sentiment itself for art. We 
find it everywhere in Venice in those days, in private 
houses, among bodies of great public functionaries, 
among the patricians, among people of the ordinary 
class, even in those coarse and practical natures who, 
like Aretino, seem to be born to live jollily and to spec- 
ulate on their associates. Whatever remains of inward 
nobleness blooms in that direction. Their libertinage 
and their assurance sympathize without effort with 
the embellished image of license and force. They find 
in muscular giants, in stout naked beauties, in the archi- 
tectural and luxurious pomp of painting an aliment 
suited to their energetic and unbridled instincts. Moral 
baseness does not exclude sensuous refinements ; on the 
contrary it throws the field open, and the man whose 
propensities are wholly on one side is only therefore the 
better qualified to appreciate the nicest shades of pleas- 
ure. Aretino bows reverentially to Michael Angelo ; all 
he asks of him is one of his sketches " in order to 
enjoy it during life and to bear it with him to his 
tomb." With Titian he is a true friend, natural and 
simple ; his admiration and his taste are sincere. He 
speaks of color with a precision and vivacity of im- 
pression worthy of Titian himself. " Signor," he 
addresses him, "my dear companion, I have to-day, 
against my usual practice, dined alone, or rather in 
company with the annoyances of that quatran fever 
w^hich leaves me no relish for the savor of any dish. 
I arose from table wearied with the depressing ennui 
with which I sat down, and then leaning my arm on 
the window-sill, and resting my breast and almost all 
my person thereon, I fell into contemplation of the 
admirable spectacle of the innumerable barks which, 
filled with strangers and Venetians, delighted not alone 
those in them but again the Grand Canal All 



293 



VENETLVN AKT. 



at once two gondolas appear and, manned by some 
famous oarsmen, contend for speed, and furnisli the 
public with pastime. I also took great pleasure in 
contemplating the multitude which, in order to witness 
this amusement, had stopped on the Eialto bridge, on 
the Camerlinghes bank, at the Pescarita, on the traghetto 
of St. Sophia and on that of Casa di Mosto. And 
whilst on both sides the crowd dispersed, each his own 
way with hilarious applause, I, as one irksome to him- 
self, who knows not what to do with his mind or with 
his thoughts, turn my eyes up to the firmament. Never, 
since God created it, was the sky so adorned with the 
exquisite painting of Hghts and shades ! The atmo- 
sphere was such as those who envy Titian would like to 
produce, because they are not able to be a Titian. . . . 
at first the buildings which, of genuine stone, seem 
nevertheless a material transfigured by artifice, then 
daylight, in certain spots pure and lively and in others 
disturbed and deadened. Consider yet again another 
marvel, dense and humid clouds which, on the principal 
plane, descend to the roofs of the edifices, and on a 
remoter one sink behind them even to the middle of 
their mass. The entire right consisted of a subdued 
color suspended under a dark gray-brown. I gazed in 
admiration on the varied tints which these clouds 
presented to the eye, the nearest brilliant with flames 
from the solar realm, the remotest with a ruddy and 
less ardent vermilion. Oh, the fine strokes of the 
pencil which from this side colored the air and made it 
recede behind the palaces as Titian practises it in his 
landscapes ! In certain parts appeared a blue-green, in 
others an azure rendered green and truly commingled 
by the capricious invention of nature, the mistress of 
all masters. It is she who with clear or obscure tints 
retires or models forms according to her own conception. 
And I myseK who know how your pencil is the soul 
of your soul, exclaimed three or four times : * Titian, 



ARETINO. 293 

where art fhou ?' " One here recognizes the backgrounds 
of the pictures of the Venetian artists ; behold the grand 
white clouds of Veronese sleepiog suspended beneath the 
colonnades, the blue distances, the atmosphere palpitat- 
ing with vague gleams, the ruddy, warm, brown shadows 
of Titian. 



CHAPTEE ni. 

THE DUCAL PALACE.— CHAHACTEES OF THE DAT.— THE ALLEGOEICAL 
PAINTINGS OP VERONESE AND TINTOEETTO.— THE RAPE OF 
EUROPA. 

Thebe are families of plants witli species so near akin 
that the resemblances are greater than the differences : 
such are the Venetian painters, and not only the four 
most celebrated, Giorgone, Titian, Tintoretto and Yer- 
onese, but others less illustrious, Palma-Yecchio, Boni- 
fazio, Paris Bordone, Pordenone, and that crowd 
enumerated by Eidolfi in his "Lives," contemporaries, 
relatives and successors of the great men, Andrea Yi- 
centino, Palma the younger, Zelotti, Bazzaco, Padovi- 
nano, Bassano, Schiavone, Moretti, and so many others. 
"What the eye clearly detects is the common and general 
type; special and personal traits remain, at the first 
glance, in the background. All have labored together 
and in turn at the Ducal Palace ; but, through the in- 
voluntary unity of their talents, their paintings form a 
complete whole. 

At the first glance the eyes are disappointed ; except- 
ing three or four halls the apartments are low and of 
small dimensions. The chamber of the Council of Ten 
and those around it are gilded cabinets inadequate for 
the figures which occupy them ; but after a few mo- 
ments the cabinet is forgotten and nothing is seen but 
the figures. Power and voluptuousness display them- 
selves superbly and unrestrainedly. Naked men and 
painted caryatides in the angles project in such relief 
that at first sight one takes them for statues ; a colossal 
breath inflates their breasts ; their thighs and shoulders 
are writhing. On the ceihng a Mercury seen on the 



THE IDEAL. 395 

belly, entirely nude, is almost a Eubens figure but 
with a more marked sensuality. A gigantic Neptune 
urges on his marine steeds who are dashing off on the 
waves ; his foot rests on the edge of the chariot, and 
his enormous ruddy torso throws itself back ; he raises 
his conch with the glee of a bestial divinity ; the salt 
air whistles through his scarf, hair and beard ; one 
cannot imagine, without seeing it, such furious inspira- 
tion, such overflowing animal vigor, such joyous pagan 
carnality, such a triumph of grand, free, licentious 
being revelling in air and in sunshine. What an injus- 
tice, that of reducing the Venetians to the depicting of 
happy repose and to the art of flattering the eye ! 
They, too, have painted grandeur and heroism ; the 
energetic and acting body has of itself affected them ; 
like the Flemings they have their own colossi. Their 
drawing, even without color, is of itself capable of ex- 
pressing the full solidity and vitality of the human 
structure. Take, for example, in this very hall, the 
four grisailles by Veronese, five or six veiled or half- 
naked women, all so vigorous and of such a frame that 
their thighs and arms might embrace and crush a com- 
batant, and yet of a physiognomy so simple or so 
spirited that in spite of their gaiety they are virgin like 
the Venuses and the Psyches of Eaphael. 

The more the ideal figures of Venetian art are con- 
sidered the more do we feel behind us the breath of an 
heroic age. The grand draped old men with bald 
brows are patrician kings of the Archipelago, barbaric 
sultans who, trailing their silken simarres, receive 
tribute and order executions. Superb women in long 
variegated and disordered robes are the imperial 
daughters of the republic, like that Catherine Cornaro 
of whom Venice received Cyprus. There are combat- 
ants' muscles within the bronzed breasts of sailors and 
captains ; their bodies, tanned by sun and wind, have 
been contending with the athletic forms of janissaries * 



^yo VENETIAN ART. 

their turbans, pelisses and furs, and their sword-liafts 
gleaming with jewels, the whole of Asiatic magnifi- 
cence mingles on their persons with flowing antique 
drapery and with the nudities of pagan tradition. 
Their straightforward look is yet tranquil and savage, 
and the spirit and tragic grandeur of their expression 
tells of the proximity to a life in which man, concen- 
trated in a few simple passions, thought of being mas- 
ter only because he would not be a slave, and of slaying 
only because he would not be slain. Such is the spirit of 
a painting by Veronese which, in the hall of the Council 
of Ten, represents an old ^varrior and a young woman ; 
it is an allegory — but the subject is of little conse- 
quence. The man is seated and bending forward with 
a grim air, his chin resting on his hand ; his colossal 
shoulders and arm, and his naked leg, bound with a 
lion-headed cnemide, issue from his massive and disor- 
dered drapery; with his turban and white beard, a 
meditative brow, and the features of a wearied Hon 
he looks like a pasha suffering with ennui. She, with 
downcast eyes, rests her hands on her soft breast ; her 
superb tresses are looped up with pearls ; she seems to 
be some captive awaiting her master's will ; and her 
neck and inclining face become of a deeper glow in 
the shadow that bathes them. 

Almost all the other halls are empty ; the paintings 
have been removed to an inner apartment. We go in 
quest of the keeper of the gallery, and tell him in bad 
Italian that we are without letters of introduction and 
have no claim or right whatever to be admitted to see 
them, whereupon he condescends to lead us to the 
closed apartment, to lift the curtains one after the other 
and to lose a couple of hours in showing them to us. 

I have enjoyed nothing more keenly in Italy ; the 
canvases are lower than our eyes ; we can look at them 
as closely as we please, at ease, and we are alone. 
Here are bronzed giants by Tintoretto, the skin folded 



IDEALS. 297 

by the play of muscles ; Saint Andrew and Saint Mark, 
veritable colossi like those of Eubens. There is a 
Saint Christopher by Titian, a sort of bronzed and 
stooping Atlas, his four limbs in action to sustain the 
burden of a world, and on his neck, in extraordinary con- 
trast, a little soft smiling urchin whose infantile flesh 
has the delicacy and the grace of a flower. Above all, a 
dozen of mythological paintings and allegories by Tin- 
toretto and Veronese of such brilliancy, of such en- 
trancing seductiveness that a veil falls from the eyes, 
revealing an unknown world, a paradise of delights ex- 
tending far be^^ond all that one could dream or imagine. 
Wlien the Old Man of the Mountain transported his 
youths asleep into his harem in order to qualify them 
for extreme devotedness to him such, mthout doubt, 
was the spectacle he prepared for them. 

On a strand, on the margin of the infinite sea, 
Ariadne in serious mood receives the ring from Bac- 
chus, while Yenus, with a golden crown, approaches in 
the air to honor their nuptials. She is the sublime 
beauty of nude flesh, as she appears on rising from the 
waves vivified by the sun and graduated by shadows. 
The goddess swims in liquid light, and her curved 
back, her thigh and her full forms palpitate haK-envel- 
oped in a white diaphanous veil. Where is the language 
with which to paint the beauty of an attitude, of a tone, 
of a contour ? What will portray healthy and rosy 
flesh under the amber transparency of gauze ? How 
represent the mellow fulness of a living form and the 
undulating limbs losing themselves in a flexible body ? 
She really swims in light as a fish swims in its lake 
and the atmosphere filled with vague reflections em- 
braces and caresses her. 

Alongside of this are two young women, "Peace" 
and " Plenty." Peace, with a tremulous delicacy, in- 
chnes toward her sister ; she has turned away and her 
head is seen only in shadow, but she possesses the 



^^^ VENETIAN ART. 

freshness of immortal youth. How luminous their 
gathered tresses, blonde as the ripened wheat ! Their 
legs and bodies are slightly deflected ; one seems to be 
falling, and this moving curvature as it commences is 
wonderful. No painter has to the same degree appre- 
ciated full, yielding forms or so vividly arrested the 
flight of action. They are about to take a posture or 
to walk ; the eye and the mind involuntarily expand the 
situation ; we see in their present a future and a past ; 
the artist has fixed a fleeting moment but one big with 
its environment. Nobody, save Kubens, has thus ex- 
pressed the incessant flow and fluidity of life. Pallas, 
meanwhile, repels Mars, and her manly cuirass with 
dark reflections brings out with irresistible coquetry 
the exquisite whiteness of the shoulder and knee. 

More animated and more voluptuous still is the 
coquetry of the group of Mercury and the Three 
Graces. All three are deflected ; with Tintoretto a 
body is not a living one when its posture is passive ; 
the display of a deflected figure adds a mobile grace to 
the universal attractiveness emanating fi'om the rest of 
its beauty. One of them, seated, extends her arms, 
and the light that falls on her flank makes portions of 
her face, neck and bosom glow against the vague pur- 
ple of the shadow. Her sister, kneeling, with downcast 
eyes, takes her hand ; a long gauze, fine like those sil- 
very webs of the fields brightened by the morning 
dawn, clings around the waist and expands over the 
bosom whose blush it allows to appear. In the other 
hand she holds a blooming bunch of flowers, ascending 
upward and resting their snowy purity on the ruddy 
whiteness of the ample arms. The third, tortuous, dis- 
plays herself in full, and from neck to heel, the eye 
follows the embracing of the muscles covering the 
superb framework of the spine and hips. Waving 
tresses, small chin, rounded eyelids, nose slightly 
turned up, dainty ears coiled like a mother-of-pearl 



IDEALS. 299 

shell, the entire countenance expresses a jojous arch- 
ness and malice similar to that of a hardy courtezan. 

This is the trait recognizable in Tintoretto, ruder and 
more decisive, also his more powerful color, more im- 
petuous action and more virile nudities. Veronese has 
tones more silvery and more rosy, gentler figures, less 
darkness of shadow and a richer and calmer decoration. 
Near a half column an ample and noble woman, Industry, 
seated before Innocence, weaves an aerial tissue ; her 
beaming eyes look up to the blue of the sky ; her 
waving blonde tresses are full of light, her half-open 
mouth seems like a pomegranate ; a vague smile allows 
her pearly teeth to appear and the transparency in 
which she is steeped has the rosy tinge of a brilliant 
aurora. The other, alongside of a lamb, bends over 
with perfect abandonment ; the silvery reflections of 
her silk drapery glow around her ; her head is in shade 
and an auroral flush lightly falls on her lips, ear and 
cheek. 

Figures like these are not to be described. We can- 
not imagine beforehand what poesy there is in a vest- 
ment or in rich attire. In another picture by Veronese, 
" Venice Queen," she sits on a throne between Peace 
and Justice ; her Avhite silk robe embroidered with 
golden lilies undulates over a mantle of ermine and 
scarlet ; her arm, delicate hand and bending dimpled 
fingers rest their satiny purity and soft serpentine 
contours on the lustrous material. The face is in shadow 
— a half-shadow roseate with a cool, palpable atmo- 
sphere enlivening still more the carmine of the lips ; 
the Hps are cherries while all the shadow is intensified 
by the lights on the hair, the soft gleams of pearls on 
the neck and in the ears and the scintillations of the 
diadem whose jewels seem to be magical eyes. She 
smiles with an air of royal and beaming benignity like 
a flower happy in its expanded and blooming petals. 
Near her, Peace, inclining abandons herself, almost 



300 VENETIAN AET. 

falling ; her robe of yellow silk studded with red flowers 
gathers into folds under the richest of violet mantles ; 
strings of pearls wind around under her white veil 
among her pale tresses, and how divine the small ear! 
There is another picture still more celebrated, " The 
Bape of Europa." For brilliancy, fancifulness, extra- 
ordinary refinement and invention in color it has no 
equal. The reflection of the foliage overhead bathes 
the entire picture with an aqueous green tone ; the 
white drapery of Europa is tinged with it ; she, arch, 
subtle and languishing, seems almost like an eighteenth 
century figure. This is one of those works in which, 
through subtlety and combination of tones, a painter 
surpasses himself, forgets his public, loses himself in 
the unexplored regions of his art, and, discarding all 
known rules, finds, outside of the common world of 
sensible appearances, harmonies, contrasts and peculiar 
successes beyond all verisimilitude and all proportion. 
Eembrandt has produced a similar work in his " Night 
watch." One has to look at it and keep silent. 



CHAPTER lY. 

TITIAN, HIS LIFE AND CHAEACTER.— HIS WORKS IN THE ACADEIMY.— 
"THE ASSIBIPTION OF THE VIRGIN," AND OTHERS.— SANTA MARLA 
BELLA SALUTE.— "THE SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM."— " CAIN AND 
ABEL."— THE WORKS OF BONIFAZIO, PALMA-VECCHIO AND VERO- 
NESE. 

The "Lives" of Ridolfi are very dry, and all that 
Yasari adds to tliem is of little import. In attempting 
to picture Titian to ourselves we imagine a happy man, 
" the most fortunate and most healthy of his species, 
heaven having awarded to him nothing but favors and 
felicities," first among his rivals, visited at his house by 
the kings of France and of Poland, favorite of the 
Emperor, of Philip II. of the doges, of Pope Paul III, 
of all the Italian princes; created a Knight and 
count of the empire, overwhelmed with commissions, 
liberally compensated, pensioned and worthily enjoy- 
ing his good fortune. He lives in great state, dresses 
splendidly and has at his table cardinals, seignors, the 
greatest artists and the ablest writers of the day. " Al- 
though not very learned" he is in his place in this 
high society ; for he has " natural intelligence, while 
familiarity with courts has taught him every proper 
term of the Knight and of the man of the world," 
so well that we find him "very courteous, endowed 
with rare politeness, and with the sweetest ways and 
manners." There is nothing strained or repulsive in 
his character. His letters to princes and to ministers 
concerning his pictures and his pensions contain that 
degree of humility which then denoted the savoir- 
vivre of a subject. He takes men well and he takes 
life well, that is to say he enjoys life Hke other men 



302 



VENETIAN AET. 



without either excess or baseness. He is no rigorist ; 
his correspondence with Aretino reveals a boon com- 
panion eating and drinking daintily and heartily, ap- 
preciative of music, of elegant luxury and the society 
of pleasure-seeking women. He is not violent, not tor- 
mented by immeasurable and dolorous conceptions ; 
his painting is healthy, exempt from morbid question- 
ings and from painful complications ; he paints in- 
cessantly, without turmoil of the brain and without 
passion during his whole life. He commenced while 
still a child, and his hand was naturally obedient to his 
mind. -He declares that "his talent is a special grace 
from heaven ;" that it is necessary to be thus endowed 
in order to be a good painter, for, otherwise "one 
cannot give birth to any but imperfect works ;" that in 
this art " genius must not be agitated." Around him 
beauty, taste, education, the talents of others, reflect 
back on him, as from a mirror, the brightness of his 
own genius. His brother, his son Orazio, his two cousins 
Cesare and Fabrizio, his relative Marco di Titiano, are 
all excellent painters. His daughter Lavinia, dressed 
as Flora with a basket of fruit on her head, furnishes 
him with a model in the freshness of her carnation, 
and in the amplitude of her admirable forms. His 
thought thus flows on like a broad river in a uniform 
channel; nothing disturbs its course, and its own in- 
crease satisfies him ; he aims at nothing beyond his 
art, like Leonardo or Michael Angelo. "Daily he 
designs something in chalk or in charcoal;" a supper 
with Sansovino or Aretino makes the day complete. 
He is never in a hurry ; he keeps his paintings a long 
time at home in order to study them carefully and render 
them still more perfect. His pictures do not scale off; 
he uses, like his master Giorgone, simple colors, 
" especially red and blue which never deform figures." 
For eighty years and over he thus paints, completing 
a century of existence, a pestilence, at last, being the 



TITIAN. 303 

cause of his deatli ; the state sets aside its regula- 
tions in order to honor him with a public funeral. It 
would be necessary to revert to the brightest days of 
pagan antiquity in order to find a genius so well 
adapted to things around him, an expansion of faculties 
so natural and so harmonious, a similar concord of 
man with himself and with the world without. 

We can see at the Academy the two extremes of his 
development, his last picture, a " Descent from the 
Cross" finished by Palma the younger, and one of his 
early pictures, a " Visitation," which he probably exe- 
cuted on quitting the school of John Bellini. In the 
latter work the contours are precise ; the figure of St. 
Joseph is almost dry, the sentiment of the color mani- 
festing itself only through the intensity of the dark tint, 
an opposition of tones and the softness of a pale violet 
robe enlivening the full blue of a mantle. It is, again, 
an altar-piece, the sober memorial of a revered legend. 
At the other extremity of his career he converts the le- 
gend into a grandiose and splendid decoration. That 
which he first displays in this " Descent from the Cross" 
is a broad white and gray architectural construction so 
arranged as to give relief to the brightest tones of the 
drapery and of the flesh-coloring, a portico bordered 
with monumental statues and with iron-headed pedes- 
tals, where living flowers twine around the subdued bril- 
liancy of the marbles, forming those beautiful effects of 
light and shade which the sun defines on the rotundi- 
ties of arches. Under these, the Magdalen, in a green 
robe, and the great red mantle of Nicodemus, unite their 
mingled hues with the pallid and peculiarly luminous 
tone of the corpse ; the aged disciple on his knees clasps 
his master's hand for the last time and the Magdalen, 
extending her arms, gives utterance to her deep feeling. 
It might be called a pagan tragedy ; the artist has 
freed himself from the christian mood and is now sim- 
ply an artist. We have here the history in full of the 



804 



YENETIAN AKT. 



sixteentli century both, at Venice and elsewhere ; with Ti- 
tian, however, the transformation was not long delayed. 
An immense painting of his youth, the " Presentation 
of the Virgin," shows with what boldness and facility he 
enters, from almost the first flight which his genius takes 
on the career which he is to pursue to the end. Whilst 
the Florentines, educated hj the goldsmiths, concentrate 
art on the imitation of individual form, the Venetians, 
left to themselves expand it until they embrace entire 
nature. It is not one man or one group which they see 
but a full scene, five or six complete groups, architec- 
ture, distances, a sky, a landscape, in short, a complete 
fragment of being; here are fifty personages, three pala- 
ces, the fagade of a temple, a portico, an obelisk, hillsides, 
trees, mountains and banks of clouds all superposed in 
the air. At the top of a vast series of gray stone steps 
stands a body of priests and the high pontiff. The 
young girl, meanwhile, blue in a blonde aureole, as- 
cends midway, lifting up her robe ; she has nothing of 
the sublime about her ; she is copied from life and her 
little cheeks are plump, she raises her hand toward the 
high-priest as if to steady herself and to inquire of 
him what he wishes of her ; she is a perfect child, her 
mind, as yet, being free of all thought ; Titian found 
those just like her at catechism exercises. We see that 
nature delights him, that real life is sufficient for him, 
that he does not seek beyond this, that the poesy of 
actual objects appears to him sufficiently great. In 
the foreground facing the spectator and at the foot of 
the staircase he has placed on old crone in a blue dress 
and a white hood, a true village character who has 
brought her marketing to town and keeps her basket 
of eggs and chickens alongside of her ; a Fleming would 
not risk more. But quite near to her, under the vines 
clinging to the stones, is the bust of an antique statue ; 
a superb procession of men and women in long vestments 
displays itself at the foot of the steps ; rounded arcades, 



TITIAN. 305 

corintliian columns, statues and cornices form a mag- 
nificent decoration for the facades of the palaces. 
One feels that he is in an actual city peopled with peas- 
ants and ordinary men and women, attending to busi- 
ness and practising their devotions, but decked with 
antiquities, grandiose in structure, beautified by the arts, 
illuminated by the sun and situated in the noblest and 
richest of landscapes. More meditative, more divorced 
from realities the Florentines create an ideal and 
abstract world above our own ; more spontaneous, more 
placid, Titian loves our world, comprehends it, shuts 
himself up within it and reproduces it, ever embellishing 
it without either recasting or suppressing it. 

In seeking for the principal trait which distinguishes 
him from his neighbors we find it to be simplicity ; by 
not refining on color, action and types he obtains pow- 
erful effect with color, action and types. Such is the 
characteristic quality of his " Assumption," so celebra- 
ted. A reddish, purple, intense tint envelops the entire 
picture, the utmost vigor of color and a sort of 
healthy energy breathing from the painting throughout. 
Below are the apostles deflected and seated, nearly all 
of them with their heads raised to heaven and as 
bronzed as the sailors of the Adriatic; their hair and their 
beards are black ; an intense shadow bathes their vis- 
ages ; scarcely does the sombre ferruginous tint indicate 
the flesh. One of them, in the centre, in a brown man- 
tle almost disappears in the darks rendered still darker 
by the surrounding brightness. Two pieces of drapery, 
red as living arterial blood, project still more vividly in 
contrast with two large green mantles, the whole forming 
a colossal commotion of writhing arms, muscular shoul- 
ders, impassioned heads and confused draperies. Over- 
head, midway in the air, rises the Virgin in the midst of 
a halo glowing like the vapor of a furnace ; she is of 
their race, healthy and vigorous, unecstatic and without 
the mj'stic smile, proudly intrenched in her red mantle 



^^^ VENETIAN AET. 

which is enveloped by one of blue. The stuff takes 
countless folds in the movements of her superb form ; 
her attitude is athletic, her expression grave, and the 
low tone of her features comes out in full relief against 
the flaming brilliancy of the aureole. At her feet, ex- 
tending over the entire space, is displayed a glittering 
garland of youthful angels ; their fresh, empurpled, rosy 
carnations traversed by shadows diffuse amidst these 
energetic tones and forms the brightest bloom of human 
vitality ; two of these detaching themselves from the 
rest, come forward and sport in full light ; their infantile 
forms revel with divine freedom in the air around them. 
Nothing is effeminate or languid ; grace here maintains 
its sway. It is a beautiful pagan festival, that of earnest 
force and beaming youthfulness ; Venetian art centres 
in this work and perhaps reaches its climax. 

Titian's pictures are not numerous in Venice, Europe, 
in general, having got possession of them ; enough of 
them still remain, however, to show his full power. He 
was endowed with that unique gift of producing Venuses 
who are real women and colossi who are real men, that 
is to say, a talent for imitating objects closely enough to 
win us with the illusion and of so profoundly transform- 
ing objects as to enkindle reverie. He has at once shown 
in the same nude beauty, a courtezan, a patrician's mis- 
tress, a listless and voluptuous fisherman's daughter 
and a powerful ideal figure, the masculine force of a 
sea-goddess and "the undulating forms of a queen of the 
empyrean. He has at once made visible in the same 
draped figure a warrior patriarch of the crusades, a 
veteran hero of maritime strife, a muscular, athletic 
wrestler, a podestat's or a sultan's grim and grandiose 
air, a stern imperial or consular head, and with this, 
or by its side a rude old soldier with swollen veins, the 
vulgar mask of a spectacled judge, the bestial features 
of a bearded Sclave, the sunburnt back and savage look 
of a galley-rower, the flattened skull and vulture eye of 



TITIAN. 307 

an embittered Jew, the ferocious glee of a fat execu- 
tioner, every kindred wave by wliicli animal nature 
joins itself to human nature. Through this comprehen- 
sion of actual objects the field of art is ten times expand- 
ed. The painter is no longer reduced, like the classic 
masters, to an imperceptible variation of fifteen or 
twenty accepted types. The infinite diversities of Nature 
with all her inequalities are open to him ; the strongest 
contrasts are within his range ; each of his works is as 
rich as it is novel ; the spectator finds in him, as in 
Bubens, a complete image of the world around him, a 
physiology, a history, a psychology in an epitomized 
form. Beneath the small and sublime Olympus, with 
a few Greek forms sitting there eternally worshipped 
by the kneeling orthodox, the artist takes possession of 
the broad populous earth whereon the bloom of all 
things is incessantly repeating itself. The accidental, 
the irregular, everything, to him, is good ; they con- 
stitute a part of the forces which keep the human sap 
in circulation ; quaintness, deformities and excesses have 
their interest as well as efflorescence and splendor ; his 
only need is to feel and to render the powerful impul- 
sion of the inward vegetation upheaving brute matter 
and converting it into living forms in the heat of sun- 
shine. Hence the ideas that crowd on the mind on re- 
examining his paintings in San-Eocco, in the Salute 
and in San-Giovanni, on meditating over those in Rome 
and in Florence and in Blenheim and at London. We 
linger in this church of Santa Maria della Salute : we 
smile at the pretty, plump and rosy communicants of 
Luca Giordano. We leave to it its pretentious decoration 
and affected statues which the artists of the seventeenth 
century have displayed under its arches. We compre- 
hend the value of a simple and robust genius satisfied 
with imitating and fortifying nature. We contem- 
plate the ceiling of the choir, then, in the sacristy, the 
manly Roman figure of Habakkuk, the bronzed and tra- 



SOS VENETIAN AET. 

gic mask of Elias almost black beneath tbe wliite mitre, 
a bald-headed St. Mark thrown backward of so spir- 
ited a face and colored with such a beautiful reflection 
of youth that we feel in it the vitahtj of great races in- 
vincible against the attacks of time. Above all we re- 
turn to the paintings of the ceihng : Goliath slain by 
David, Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and Cain kilhng Abel. 
"We recognize in the boldness and inspiration of these 
colossi, the vigorous hand which traced the celebrated 
imageries, the "Six Saints'' and the formidable "Pas- 
sage of the Eed Sea." Save Michael Angelo, nobody has 
thus handled the human frame. Abraham is a giant 
and exterminator ; after seeing his head and gray 
beard, his thigh and two nude arms impetuously is- 
suing from his yellow drapery we feel the presence of a 
genuine patriarch, combatant and dominator of men ; 
he lifts his arm and all his muscles are fully dis- 
tended ; the head of the boy Isaac is already bent down 
by his violent hand. The movement is so energetic 
that one single impulse runs through all three of the 
personages from the feet of the precipitating angel 
arresting the sword to the half-contorted body of the 
man turning around, and across him, even to the yield- 
ing neck of the prostrate child. — More furious still is 
the gesture of the fratricide : not that Titian renders him 
repulsive ; on the contrary his impetuosity bears the 
spectator along with him ; it is not an assassin but a 
Hercules slaying an enemy. Abel, overthrown on his 
side, reels, stretching out his limbs. The other, as gi- 
gantic and muscular as an athlete, one foot on the vic- 
tim's breast falls back and with the full might of his 
torso and rigid arms is about to destroy him. A som- 
bre vinous tone reddens with its threatening hues the 
intersections and ridges of the muscles and tendons and 
the swellings and depressions of the excited flesh, while 
the bestial visage of the murderer, obliquely illu- 



BONIFAZIO. 



309 



minated on one temple, is lost in a black fore- 
shortening. 

The Academy and the Churches. — I have neither cour- 
age nor leisure to speak of other paintings. The 
Academy contains seven hundred of them, to which add 
those of the churches. It would require a volume ; 
moreover the effect oftenest consists of a tone of 
luminous flesh near a sombre one, and in the grada- 
tions of tint of a red or of a green piece of drapery. 
One may characterize it in gross Tvdth words, but when 
it comes to delicacies words are inadequate. The only 
proper thing to do is to come and enjoy for j'ourself. 
We go repeatedly and again and again to the Academy. 
We traverse the suspension bridge, the sole modern 
and ungraceful work in Yenice. We enter haphazard 
one of these twenty halls and select some of the mas- 
ters with whom we will pass the afternoon, Palma- 
Yecchio for instance and Bonifazio, whose color is as 
rich and intense as Titian's. They are plants of the 
same family ; but the public eye is fixed on the top- 
most branch of the stem. One of the pictures by 
Bonifazio, " The Wicked Bich Man's Banquet," is ad- 
mirable. Under an open portico, between veined 
columns, are seated large and magnificent women in 
square low-necked dresses and black velvet skirts, with 
sleeves of ruddy gold and in robes rudely figured with 
red and yellow; superb forms of a stout build, with 
fleshy muscles audaciously displayed in the barbarous 
luxury of variegated stuffs descending in hea^-y folds 
about their heels. A little negro, a small domestic 
animal, holds a scroll of music before a female singer 
and some players on instruments ; the air resounds 
with voices, and, to complete this noisy pomp, we per- 
ceive outside of the gardens, horses, falconers and all 
the paraphernalia of seigneurial parade. Amidst this 
display sits the master in a great mantle of red velvet, 



310 VENETLIN ART. 

sanguine and sombre like a Henry YIII. with tlie hard 
and stern expression of a sensuality gorging itself 
without satiety."^ Pleasures of this description would 
repel us ; we have become too cultivated and too tame 
to comprehend them ; courtezans of that stamp would 
frighten us ; they are too unintellectual and too gross ; 
their arms would fell us to the ground and their eyes 
give an expression of too great hardness. Only in the 
sixteenth century did people love massive and violent 
voluptuousness : then the fury of lusts and sensual 
gluttony were copied from life ; but, on the other hand, 
it was only in the sixteenth century, that they knew 
how to paint perfect beauty. We recross the iron 
bridge, so formal and so ugly, and, plunging into a 
labyrinth of petty streets, go to Santa Maria Formosa, 
in order to see the " Saint Barbara" of Palma-Yecchio. 
She is no saint, but a blooming young girl, the most 
attractive and lovable that one can imagine. She stands 
erect, proud in her bearing with a crown on her brow 
and her robe, carelessly gathered around the waist, un- 
dulates in folds of orange purple against the bright 
scarlet of her mantle. Two streams of magnificent 
brown hair glide down on either side of her neck ; her 
delicate hands seem to be those of a goddess ; one half 
of her face is in shadow and half-lights play upon her 
uplifted hand. Her beautiful eyes are beaming and 
her fresh and dehcate lips are about to smile ; she dis- 
plays the gay and noble spirit of Venetian women ; 
ample and not too full, spirituelle and benevolent, she 
seems to be made to give happiness to herself and to 
others. 

Let us set the others aside. What a pity, however, 
to quit the five or six Yeroneses in the Academy, his 
^'Eepast at the house of Levi," his "Apostles on the 
Clouds," his " Annunciation," his virgins, his lustrous 

* Compare this with the same scene treated by Teniers. 



VERONESE. 311 

variegated marble columns, his golden niches rayed 
with dark arabesques, his grand staircases, his balus- 
trades profiled on the blue sky, his ruddy silks striped 
with gold, his white horses rearing under their scarlet 
housings, his guards and his negroes decked in red and 
green, his stately robes starred with intricate branch- 
ings and lustrous designs, and especially the wonderful 
diversity of heads and the tranquil harmony that radi- 
ates like music from his silvery color, his serene figures 
and his rich decorations ! If Titian is sovereign, and 
the dominator of the school, Veronese is its regent and 
viceroy. If the former has the simple force and gran- 
deur of its founders, the latter possesses the calmness 
and genial smile of an undisputed and legitimate mon- 
arch. That which he seeks and finds is not the 
sublime or heroic, not violence or sanctity, not purity 
or softness : all these conditions show only one of the 
faces of nature, and indicate a purification, an effort, 
enervation or intractability ; what he loves is expanded 
beauty, the flower in full bloom but intact, just when 
its rosy petals unfold themselves while none of them 
are, as yet, withered. He has the air of addressing 
himself to his contemporaries and of saying to them : 
" We are noble beings, Venetians and grand seignors 
of a privileged and superior race. Let us not reject 
or repress anything about us ; mind, heart and senses, 
everything we have merits gratification. Let us delight 
our instincts and our soul, and let us make of life a 
fete in which felicity shall confound itself with beauty." 
But you may see several of his great works in the 
Louvre and you will understand him much better 
through a picture than through any reasoning of mine. 
One man of genius, on the contrary, Tintoretto, has 
almost all his works at Venice. One has no suspicion 
of his value until one has come here. As a day is still 
left to me let us devote it to him. 



CHAPTEE Y. 

THE CHARACTER AND GENIUS OF TINTORETTO.-THE " SnRACLE OF 
ST. MARK."— THE SCUOLA OF SAN-ROCCO.— THE " CRUCIFIXION."— 
GENERAL IMPRESSIONS. 

A MOKE vigorous and more fecund artistic tempera- 
ment is not to be found in the world. In many particu- 
lars he resembles Michael Angelo. He approximates to 
him in savage originality and in energy of will. But a 
few days transpire when Titian, his master, on seeing 
his sketches, becomes jealous, gets alarmed and sends 
him away from his school. Child as he is he deter- 
mines to learn, and to achieve success unaided. He 
procures plaster casts from the antique and from 
Michael Angelo's works, seeks out and copies Titian's 
paintings, draws fi'om the nude, dissects, models in 
wax and in clay, drapes his models, suspends them in 
the air, studies foreshortenings and works desperately. 
Wherever a painting is being executed he is present 
" and learns his profession by looking on." His brain 
ferments and his conceptions so torment him that he is 
obliged to get rid of them ; he goes with the masons to 
the citadel and traces figures around the clock. Mean- 
while he practises with Schiavone, and thenceforth feels 
himself a master ; " his thoughts boil ;" he suggests to 
the fathers of the Madonna del' Orto four grand subjects, 
"The "Worship of the Golden Calf," the "Last Judg- 
ment," hundreds of feet of canvas, thousands of figures, 
an overflow of imagination and genius ; he will execute 
them gratuitously, requiring no pay but his expenses ; 
he requires nothing but an issue and an outlet. On 
another occasion the brotherhood of San-Rocco having 
demanded of five celebrated artists cartoons for a 
painting which they wish to have executed he secretly 



TINTORETTO. 313 

takes the measure of tlie place, completes the picture in a 
few da3^s, brings it to the spot designated and declares 
that he presents it to San-Kocco. His competitors 
stand aghast at this fury of invention and of dispatch : 
and thus does he always labor ; it seems as if his mind 
was a volcano always charged and in a state of eruption. 
Canvases of twenty, forty and seventy feet, crowded 
with figures as large as life — overthrown, massed to- 
gether, launched through the air, foreshortened in the 
most violent manner and with splendid effects of light 
— scarcely suffice to contain the rapid, fiery, dazzling 
jet of his brain. He covers entire churches with them, 
and his life, like that of Michael Angelo, is there ex- 
hausted. His habits are those of all savage, violent 
geniuses out of harmony with society, in whom the 
inner growth of the sentiments is so strong that pleas- 
ure is distasteful and who find refuge, composure and 
tranquillity only in their art. " He Uved in his own 
thoughts, afar from every joy," absorbed in his studies 
and with his work. On ceasing to paint he retires to 
the remotest corner of his dwelling, and shuts himself 
up in a chamber where, in order to see clearly, a lamp 
has to be lighted in the daytime. Here, for diversion, 
he fashions his models ; nobody is permitted to enter ; 
never does he paint before any one except his intimates, 
" His sole ambition is fame," and especially the desire 
to surpass himself, to attain to perfection. His words 
are few and trenchant ; his grave and rude physiogno- 
my is the exact image of his soul. ^ On uttering a 
piquant remark his face remains fixed, he does not 
laugh. Bravely and proudly does he lay out his own 
course, singly and against the open jealousy and hos- 
tility of other painters, and maintains himself erect 
before the public as before the rulers of opinion. Pis- 
tol in hand he silences, with cool irony, the cynic 



* See his portrait by himself. 
14 



314 



VENETIAN AET. 



Aretino. On his friends exhibiting a picture in public 
he counsels them to stay at home : " let them shoot 
their arrows, people must get accustomed to jour con- 
ceptions." The more one studies his life and works 
the more one sees in him a colorist Michael Angelo, 
less concentrated than he, less self-mastering, less 
qualified to refine upon his ideas, wholly given up to 
his fancies, and whose impetuosity makes of him an 
improvisator. 

Hence it is that when his conception is just or matured 
he rises to an extraordinalry height. No painting, in 
my judgment, surpasses or perhaps equals his St. Mark in 
the Academy ; at all events no painting has made an 
equal impression on my mind. It is avast picture twenty 
feet square containing fifty figures of the size of life, St. 
Mark sombre in the light, and a slave luminous amidst 
sombre personages. The saint descends from the upper- 
most sky head foremost, precipitated, suspended in the 
air in order to rescue a slave from punishment ; his 
head is in shadow and his feet are in the light ; his 
body, compressed by an extraordinary feat of fore- 
shortening, plunges at one bound with the impetuosity 
of an eagle. No one, save Eubens, has so caught the 
instantaneousness of motion, the fury of flight ; along- 
side of this vehemence and this truthfulness classic 
figures seem stiff, as if copied after Academy models 
whose arms are upheld by strings ; we are borne along 
with and follow him to the ground, as yet unreached. 
Here, the naked slave, thrown upon his back in front 
of the spectator and as miraculously foreshortened as 
the other, glows with the luminiousness of a Correggio. 
His superb, virile, muscular body palpitates; his 
ruddy cheeks, contrasted with his black curled beard, 
are empurpled with the brightest hues of life. The 
axes of iron and wood have been shattered to pieces 
without having touched his flesh, and all are gazing at 
them. The turbaned executioner with upraised hands 



315 

sliows the judge tlie broken handle with an air of 
amazement, which excites him throughout. The judge, 
in a red Venetian pourpoint, springs half way off his 
seat and from his marble steps. The assistants around 
stretch themselves out and crowd up, some in sixteenth 
century armor, others in cuirasses of Roman leather, 
others in barbaric simarres and turbans, others in Yene- 
tian caps and dalmatics, some with legs and arms 
naked, and one wholly so except a mantle over his 
thighs and a handkerchief on his head, with splendid 
contrasts of light and dark, with a variety, a brilliancy, 
an indescribable seductiveness of light reflected in the 
polished depths of the armor, diffused over lustrous 
figurings of silks, imprisoned in the warm shadows of 
the flesh and enlivened by the carnations, the greens 
and the rayed yellows of the opulent materials. Not a 
figure is there that does not act and act all over ; not a 
fold of drapery, not a tone of the body is there that does 
not add to the universal dash and brilliancy. A woman 
supported against a pedestal falls back in order to see 
better ; she is so animated that her whole body trembles, 
her eyes flash and her mouth opens. Architectural 
forms in the background and men on the terraces or 
clinging to columns add the amplitude of space to the 
scenic richness. We can breathe freely there, and the 
breath we take is more inspiring than elsewhere ; it is 
the flame of life as it flashes forth in gleaming lucidity 
from the adult and perfect brain of a man of genius ; 
here all quivers and palpitates in the joyousness of 
light and of beauty. There is no example of such 
luxuriousness and success of invention ; one must see 
for himself the boldness and ease of the jet, the natural 
impulse of genius and temperament, the lively spon- 
taneous creation, the necessity of expressing and the 
satisfaction in rendering his idea instantly unconscious 
of rules, the sure and sudden dash of an instinct 
which culminates at once and without effort in perfect 



316 VENETIAN ART. 

action as tlie bird flies and the horse runs. Attitudes, 
types and costumes of every kind, with all their 
peculiarities and divergencies flooded their minds and 
fell into harmony in one sublime moment. The 
curved back of a woman, a cuirass gleaming with 
light, an indolent nude form in transparent shadow, 
rosy flesh with the pulsating amber skin, the deep 
scarlet of careless folds, the medley of heads, arms and 
legs, the reflection of tones brightened and transformed 
by mutual illumination, all disgorged in a mass Hke 
water spouting from a surcharged conduit. Sudden 
and complete concentrations are inspiration itseK, and 
perhaps there is not in the world one fuller and more 
animated than this one. 

I believe that before having seen this work one can 
have no idea of the human imagination. I set aside 
ten other pictures that are in the Academy, a " Saint 
Agnes," a " Eesurrection of Christ," a " Death of 
Abel" and an " Eve," a superb and solid sensual form 
with rude contours, stoutly built, the legs undulating, 
the head animal and expressionless but blooming and 
full of life, so strong and so joyous in its tranquilhty, so 
richly mottled with lights and shadows that here, even 
more than in Rubens, one feels the full poesy of 
nudity and of flesh. It is in the churches and in the 
public monuments that he is to be understood ; there 
is scarcely one of these that does not contain vast pic- 
tures by him, — an "Assumption" in the Jesuits', a 
" Crucifixion" and I know not how many other can- 
vases in San Giovanni e Paolo, the "Marriage of 
Cana" at Santa Maria della Salute, four colossal paint- 
ings at Santa Maria del' Orto, the " Forty Martyrs," 
the "Shower of Manna," the "Last Supper," the 
" Martyrdom of St. Stephen" at San Giorgio, twenty 
pictures and ceilings, a "Paradise" twenty -three feet 
high and seventy-seven feet long in the Ducal Palace, 
and finally, at the Church of San-Eocco and at the Scuola 



TINTORETTO. 317 

of San-Eocco, wliicli seem like liis own galleries, forty 
pictures, a few of them gigantic and capable together 
of covering the walls of two square saloons in the 
Louvre. Veritably we do not know him in Europe. 
The European galleries contain scarcely anything by 
him, the few^ examples they have acquired being small 
or of minor importance. Save three or four scenes in 
the Ducal Palace he has been poorly engraved ; ex- 
cept a " Crucifixion" by Augustino Carrache his great 
■works have not been engraved. He is disproportionate 
in everything, in dimensions as well as in his concep- 
tions. Academic minds at the end of the sixteenth 
century decried him as extravagant and negligent : the 
prodigious and the superhuman in his genius prove 
distasteful to minds of a common stamp or fond of re- 
pose. But the truth is no man like him is or has been 
seen ; he is unique in his w^ay like Michael Angelo, 
Eubens and Titian. Let him be called extravagant, 
impetuous and improvisator ; let people complain of 
the blackness of his coloring, of his figures topsy- 
turvy, of the confusion of his groups, of his hasty 
brush, of the exhaustion and the mannerism which 
sometimes lead him to introduce old metal into his new 
casting ; let all the defects of his qualities be adduced 
against him, I am willing ; — but a furnace like this, so 
ardent, so overflowing, with such outbursts and flaming 
coruscations, with such an immense jet of sparks, with 
such luminous flashes so sudden and multiplied, with 
such a surprising and constant volume of smoke and 
flame has never been encountered here below. 

I know not, indeed, how to speak of him ; I cannot 
describe his paintings, so vast are they and so numer- 
ous. It is the inward condition of his mind that must 
be enlarged upon. It seems to me that, in him, we dis- 
cover a unique state of things, the Hghtning-burst of 
inspiration. The term is strong, but it corresponds to 
ascertained facts of which examples may be cited. In 



318 VENETIAN AET. 

certain extreme moments, when confronting great dan- 
ger, in any sudden crisis, man sees distinctly, in a flash, 
with terrible intensity, whole years of his life, com- 
plete incidents and scenes and often a fragment of the 
imaginary world : the recollections of the asphyxiated 
and the accounts of persons escaping from drowning, 
the revelations of suicides and of opium-eaters,* and 
of the Indian Pur anas all confirm this. The activity of 
the brain suddenly increased ten or a hundredfold 
causes the mind to live more in this brief foreshorten- 
ing of time than in all the rest of life put together. It 
is true that it commonly issues from this subhme state 
of hallucination exhausted and morbid ; but when the 
temperament is sufficiently vigorous to support the 
electric shock without flagging, men like Luther, St. 
Ignatius, St. Paul and all the great visionaries accom- 
plish works transcending the powers of humanity. 
Such are the transports of creative imagination in the 
breasts of great artists ; with less of a counterpoise 
they were as strong with Tintoretto as with the greatest. 
If a proper idea be formed of this iuYoluntary and ex- 
traordinary state in a tragic temperament like his, and 
of the colorist senses such as he possessed, we can see 
how everything else follows. 

He never selects ; his vision imposes itself on him ; 
an imaginative scene to him is a reahty ; with one dash, 
he copies it instantaneously, along with whatever in it 
is odd, surprising, vast and multitudinous ; he ex- 
tracts a portion from nature and transfers it bodily to 
his canvas, with all the force and abruptness of a spon- 
taneous creation knowing neither combination nor 
hesitancy. It is not two or three personages he paints 
but a scene, a fragment of life, an entire landscape and 
a populous architecture. His " Marriage of Cana" is 
a complete, gigantic dining-hall, with ceilings, windows, 

* " Confessions of an Opium Eater," by De Quincey. 



TINTORETTO. 319 

doors, floors, domestics, an exit into side-rooms, the 
guests in two files around the receding table, the men 
on one side and the women on the other, the two rows 
of heads appearing like the two lines of trees of an ave- 
nue, and, at the far end, Christ, small and effaced, on 
account of the multitude and the distance. His " Pis- 
cine probatique" at the Scuola San-Rocco is a hospi- 
tal ; half-naked women stretched on a sheet which peo- 
ple are lifting, others on couches with bare legs and 
breasts, one in a tub entirely stripped and Christ in the 
midst of them among fevers and ulcers. His " Shower 
of Manna" is an encampment of people with all the 
petty details of hfe, every diversity of landscape and all 
the grandeur of illimitable distances : here is a camel 
and his driver, there a man near a table with a pestle, 
in another place two women washing, another young- 
woman listening and stooping to mend a basket, others 
seated near a tree, others turning a reel with sheets at- 
tached to it to collect the manna and a grand draped 
old man in consultation with Moses. In his exuberance 
as in his genius he surpasses his own age and approxi- 
mates to ours. His pictures seem to be " illustrations; " 
only he produces in a length of forty feet, with figures as 
large as life, what we try to do in the space of a foot 
with figures no bigger than one's finger. Life in 
general interests him more than the particular life of 
one being ; he discards picturesque and plastic rules, 
subordinating the personage to the whole and parts to 
the effect. He is impelled to render, not this or that 
man standing or lying, but a moment in nature or in 
history. He is invaded as if from without ; he is over- 
powered by an image which takes possession of him, 
torments him and in which he has faith. 

Hence his unprecedented originality. Compared 
with him all painters are self-copyists ; you are always 
astonished before his pictures ; you ask yourself where 
he went for that, into what unknown and fantastic but 



820 



VENETIAN AET. 



nevertheless real world. In the "Last Supper" the 
central figure is a large kneeling servant, her head in 
shadow and her shoulder luminous ; she holds a platter 
of beans and is bringing in dishes ; a cat attempts to 
climb up her basket. Round about are buffets, domes- 
tics, ewers and disciples in a perpendicular file border- 
ing a long table. It is a supper, a veritable evening re- 
past, which is for him the essential idea. Above the 
table glimmers a lamp while a blue light from the moon 
falls on their heads ; but the supernatural enters on all 
sides : in the background by an opening in the sky and 
a choir of radiant angels ; on the right by a swarm of 
pale angels whirling about in the nocturnal obscurity. 
With extraordinary boldness and force of verisimilitude 
the two worlds divine and human, merge into each 
other and form but one. When this man reads in the 
Evangelists the technical term it is the corporeal ob- 
ject with all its details which forcibly impresses him 
and which he forcibly renders. St. Joseph was a car- 
penter ; instantly, in order to depict the Annunciation, 
he represents the actual house of a carpenter, — on the 
outside a shed in order to work in the open air, the 
disorder of a workshop, bits of wood and carpentry 
tumbled about, piled up, adjusted, leaning against the 
walls, saws, planes, cords, a workman busy ; within, a 
large bed with red curtains, a bottomless chair, a 
child's willow cradle, the wife in a red petticoat, a 
vigorous, amazed and frightened plebeian. A Fleming 
could not have more accurately imitated the confusion 
and vulgarity of common life. But passion always 
accompanies these intense and circumstantial visions. 
Gabriel and a flock of tumultuous whirling angels dart 
athwart the door and window ; the unfinished domicile 
seems to be shattered by the shock ; it is the fury of 
an invasion ; the pigeons betake themselves in full 
flight to their own tenement; they pitch all together 
upon the Virgin. You may judge by this frenzied and 



TINTORETTO. 321 

disproportionate activity the irresistible irruption with 
which tumultuous ideas are unloosed in his mind. No 
painter has thus loved, felt and rendered action. All 
his figures dart and re-dart forward and backward. 
There is a " Kesurrection" by him in which no figure 
is in a state of equilibrium ; angels descend head 
foremost from above ; Christ and the saints swim in 
the air ; the atmosphere is a resistant and palpable 
fluid which sustains bodies and allows them every atti- 
tude as water does the fishes. When he chances to 
paint a violent scene like the " Bronze Serpent" or a 
'''Massacre of the Innocents" it is a delirium. The 
women freely seize the swords of the executioners, roll 
down precipitated from the heights of a terrace, strain 
their infants to their breasts with an animal gripe and 
fall upon them covering them with their bodies. Five 
or six bodies, one on top of the other, women and 
children, wounded, dying and living, form a mound. 
The space is covered with a mass of heads and limbs, 
and torsos falling, running, struggling and staggering 
as if a hurly-burly of inebriates ; it is the infuriate 
bacchanalianism of despair. Near this, on a mountain 
cliff dog-headed serpents forage amongst a monstrous 
heap of prostrated men. One, already black, having 
died howling, lies on his back his limbs swollen with 
the venom, his muscles contorted with convulsions, the 
breast strained and projecting and the head cast back- 
ward ; others, in the last agony, bleed and writhe, 
some on the flank, others erect and stiff, with bowed 
head, and others with their thighs drawn up and their 
arms contorted, all under livid lights contending with 
deathly shadows, rolling, heaving and pitching like a 
human avalanche down the side of a precipice. The 
artist is on his own domain ; he wanders about grandly 
in the realm of the impossible. He sees too much at 
once, forty, sixty and eighty personages and their sur- 
roundings, aroused, commmgled and crowded beneath 



323 



YENETIAN ART. 



a tragedy of lights and darks. Let his second Piscine 
prohatique in the church of San-Eocco be contemplated ; 
no sky, no background ; save the roof and four shafts 
of Ionic columns, all consists of bodies and heaps of 
bodies, naked backs and breasts, heads, beards, man- 
tles and drapery, a monstrous accumulation of over- 
thrown humanity, male and female, supporting each 
other and extending their arms to the Saviour Christ. 
A woman stretched on her back turns her eyes toward 
him to demand succor. An enormous torso in the 
agony of death reaches out and falls upon a pile of 
drapery in a last attempt to draw near the source of 
cure. Here and there are beautiful faces of suppliant 
spouses emergmg into light, bald skulls of old soldiers, 
muscular breasts and grand beards like those of the 
river-gods. In the foreground a colossal attendant, a 
sort of athlete and porter, contracts his thighs and bows 
himself up on his loins to carry off a bundle of linen. 
Another, an old giant, almost naked, sits against a 
column, his legs hang down and he appears resigned 
like an old inmate of a hospital; his reddened and 
flabby skin wrinkles at every anfractuosity of the mus- 
cles ; he has waited years and can wait still longer : he 
muses with an upturned face sensitive to the sunshine 
which rewarms his old blood. — Through this taste for 
the actual and the colossal, through these violent' con- 
trasts of light and dark, through this passion which 
bears him on to the end of his conception, through this 
audacity which leads him to thoroughly display his idea 
he is the most dramatic of painters. Delacroix should 
have come here ; he would have recognized one of his 
ancestors, sensitive like himself to crude reality, to un- 
restrained energy, to aggregate effects, to the moral 
force of color, but healthier, more sure of his hand and 
nurtured by a more picturesque age and in a broader 
sentiment of physical grandeur. None of Delacroix's 
pictures leave a more poignant impression than " St. 



THE ALBEEGO. o»o 

Eocli among tlie Prisoners." They are in a vast som- 
bre dungeon, a sort of antique ergastulum, where iron 
bars, stocks and straining chains rack and dislocate 
limbs through slow and prolonged turning. The saint 
appears ; a miserable creature fastened by the neck 
raises toward him his twisted head ; another, from the 
bottom of a grated fosse, fixes his face against the bars ; 
spines reddened and rigid with muscles, breasts of the 
color of rust, heads brown like lions' manes, white, lu- 
minous beards appear in the midst of sepulchral ob- 
scurity ; but higher up, in the duskiness of the shadow, 
float exquisite figures, silver}^ silken robes, tunics of 
pale violet and blonde radiant hair, the visitation of an 
angelic choir. 

After having passed through the church and the two 
stories of the Scuola there still remains a grand hall to 
visit, the Albergo ; the walls and ceilings here are also 
tapestried with paintings by Tintoretto, It is in vain 
to say to yourself that you are weary, and to accuse 
the painter of exuberance and excess, to feel that these 
forty immense pictures were executed too rapidly and 
rather indicated than perfected, that he presumes on 
his own and the spectator's powers. You enter, and you 
find strength left, because he imparts it to you in spite 
of yourself. Yirgins and women thrown backAvard swim 
on the panels of the ceiling, their ample beauty, the 
magnificent rotundity of their flesh bathed in shadow, 
being displayed with inexpressible richness of tone. A 
" Christ bearing the Cross" develops itself on the 
winding escarpment of a mountain ; Christ, with a rope 
around his neck, is dragged on in front, while the sav- 
age procession scales the rocks with the sorrowful and 
furious dash of a " Passion" by Kubens.* On the 
other side the meek Christ stands before Pilate, and the 
long white shroud wholly enveloping him contrasts its 

* The same scene in the Brussels Musee, by Rubens. 



324 VENETIAN AKT. 

funereal color witli the black shadows of the architec- 
ture and with the blood-red vestments of the assistants. 
Over the door a ruddj corpse lies stiffened between the 
soldiers and the scarlet robes of the judges ; but these 
are merely accompaniments. An entire section of the 
hall, a wall forty feet long and high in proportion, disap- 
pears beneath a " Crucifixion," ten scenes in one, and 
so balanced as to constitute a single composition ; 
eighty figures grouped and spaced, a plateau strewn 
with rocks at the base of a mountain, trees, towers, a 
bridge, cavaHers, stony crests, and in the distance, a 
vast brownish horizon. Never did eye embrace such en- 
sembles, or combine the like effects. In the centre 
Christ is nailed to the upraised cross, and his drooping 
head is obscure in the dim radiance of his nimbus. A 
ladder rises behind the cross, and executioners are 
climbing lip and passing to each other the sponge. At 
the foot of the cross the disciples and women standing 
extend their arms, and those kneeling sob and weep ; 
the Virgin swoons, and all these forms of bending, tot- 
tering, falling women under grand red and blue draper- 
ies of every hue, with a flash of sunlight on a cheek or 
a chin, produce a funereal pomp of the most imposing 
character. Like a grandiose harmony sustaining a 
rich and penetrating voice, surrounding crowds and in- 
cidents accompany the principal scene with their tragic 
variety and splendor. On the left, one of the two 
thieves is already bound to his cross and is being raised 
up ; the upper part of his body glows in the light, and 
the rest is in shadow. Five or six executioners strain 
at the ropes and support those who are cHmbing up, 
pulling and pushing with all the might and force of the 
rigid muscular machinery. The light falls across their 
rosy and rayed cassocks, on the brown tendons of their 
necks and on the swollen veins of their foreheads. 
Their implements are there, axes, picks, wedges, a mas- 
sive ladder, and, at the head of the cross, in a beautiful 



"the crucifixion. " 325 

luminous shadow, an indifferent spectator leaning over 
his horse's neck and looking on. — On the other side, with 
equal splendor and diversity, is displayed the third exe- 
cution, like one chorus corresponding tcJ another cho- 
rus. The cross lies on the ground, and the victim is 
being attached to it ; one executioner brings ropes, an- 
other, a superb, athletic fellow, expanding his twisted 
shoulder, turns an auger in one of its arms ; at the foot 
of the plateau sits an old amateur of such spectacles ; 
it interests him ; he bends forward half reclining in his 
red mantle, and near him, on an iron-gray horse, a sort 
of ruffian in a cap, a tall, red scamp, fully illuminated, 
leans over in order to make a serviceable suggestion. — 
Beyond these three scenes, there rolls in tiers on five or 
six planes, with an innumerable variety of tints and 
forms, the broad and pompous harmony of the multitude, 
assistants of every kind, petty accessory incidents, dig- 
gers excavating the graves of the criminals, crossbowmen 
in a hollow drawing lots for the tunics, priests in grand 
robes, men-at-arms in cuirasses, cavaliers boldly draped 
and posed, simarres of Jews and armor of gentlemen, 
spirited horses in neutral and auroral trappings, wo- 
men's orange and green skirts, contrasts of delicate and 
intense tones, popular visages and chivalric brows, easy 
and complicated attitudes, all in such amplitude of 
light, with such a triumphant expansion of genius and 
such perfect representation that one goes away half 
stunned, as from a too rich and powerful concert, all 
sense of the proportion of things gone and wondering 
if one ought to have faith in his own sensations. 

May 1st, — I have just purchased the engraving of 
Augustino Carrache ; it only gives the skeleton of the 
picture and even falsifies it. I returned to-day to 
see the picture again. He is a little less impressive 
on the second inspection ; the effect of the whole, that 
of the first sight, is too essential in the eyes of Tinto- 
retto ; he subordinates the rest to these, his hand is too 



oJib VENETIAN ART. 

prompt, lie too readily follows out his first conception. 
In this respect he is superior to the masters ; he has 
only done two complete things, his mythological subjects 
in the Ducal Palace and his " Miracle of St. Mark." 

3Iay 2(i. — When, after quitting Venetian art, one tries 
to gather up his impressions into a complete whole, he 
is sensible only of one emotion, and that is like the 
sweet sonorous echo of perfect enjoyment. Part of a 
naked foot issuing from silk mottled with gold, a 
pearl whose milky brightness quivers on touching a 
snowy neck, the ruddy warmth of life peering out be- 
neath transparent shadow, the gradations and alter- 
nations of clear and sombre surfaces following the 
muscular undulations of the body, the opposition and 
agreement of two flesh-tones lost in each other and 
transformed by interchanging reflections, a vacillating 
light fringing a piece of dark metal, a purple spot 
enhvened by a green tone, in brief, a rich harmony 
due to colors manipulated, opposed and composed as a 
concert proceeds from various instruments, and which 
fills the eye as the concert fills the ear, — this is the one 
peculiar endowment. By this inventiveness forms are 
vivified ; alongside of these others seem abstract. Else- 
where the body has been separated from its surround- 
ings, it has been simplified and reduced ; it has been 
forgotten that the contour is only the Hmit of a color, 
that for the eye color is the object itself. For, so soon 
as the eye is sensitive it feels in the object, not alone a 
diminution of brilliancy proportioned to its receding 
planes, but again a multitude and a mingling of tones, 
a general blueness augmenting with distance, an infinity 
of reflections which other bright objects intersect and 
overlie with diverse colors and intensities, a constant 
vibration of the interposing atmosphere where float 
imperceptible irridescences, where there are growing 
striae quivering and speckled with innumerable atoms, 
and in which fugitive appearances are incessantly dis- 



THE SPIRIT OF VENETIAN ART. 327 

solving and vanishing. The exterior as well as the 
interior of beings is only movement, change and trans- 
formation, and their complicated agitation is life. 
Starting from this the Venetians vivify and harmonize 
the infinite tones uniting to compose a tint ; they make 
perceptible the mutual contagion by which bodies com- 
municate their reflections ; they augment the power by 
which an object receives, returns, colors, tempers and 
harmonizes the innumerable luminous rays striking on 
it, like a man who straining soft cords enhances their 
vibrating qualities in order to convey sounds to the ear 
which our coarser ears had not yet detected. They 
develop and thus exalt the visible existence of things ; 
out of the real they fashion the ideal : hence a newborn 
poesy. Let there be added to this that of form, and 
that genius through which they invent a complete 
spontaneous, original, intermediary type between that 
of the Florentines and that of the Flemings, exquisite 
in softness and voluptuousness, sublime in force and in 
inspiration, capable of furnishing giants, athletes, 
kings, empresses, porters, courtezans, the most real 
and the most ideal figures, in such a way as to unite 
extremes and assemble in one personage the most ex- 
quisite charm of sensibility and the most grandiose 
majesty, a grace almost as seductive as that of Cor- 
reggio, but with richer health and more vigorous ampli- 
tude, a flow of life as fresh and almost as broad as that 
of Rubens, but with more beautiful forms and a better 
regulated rhythm, an energy almost as colossal as that 
of Michael Angelo, but without painful severity or re- 
volting despair : — then may one judge of the place 
which the Venetians occupy among painters and I do 
not know if I yield to personal inclination in preferring 
them to any. 



BOOK YIL 



LOMBAEDY 



CHAPTEK I. 



VERONA.— THE AMPHITHEATRE.— CHURCHES.— LOMBARD STYLE OF 
ARCHITECTURE.— THE DUOMO.— SAN ZENONE.— THE SCALIGERS.— 
THE PIAZZA.— THE MUSEO. 

On leaving Yenice the train seems to pass over the 
surface of the water ; the sea glows on the right and 
on the left and ripples up within two paces of the 
wheels ; the sandbanks are multiplied amidst the 
shiniug pools. The lagunes diminish ; great ditches 
absorb whatever remains of the water and drain the 
soil. The immense plain becomes green and is covered 
with vegetation ; the crops are sprouting young anji 
fresh, and the vines are budding on the trees while, on 
the sloping declivities, pretty country-houses warm 
themselves iu the mid-day sunshine. Meanwhile, to 
the north, between the great verdant expanse and the 
grand blue dome overhead, the Alpine wall bristles up 
dark with its rocks, towers and bastions, shattered 
Hke the ruins of an enclosure demohshed by artillery, 
the pale clouds of smoke issuing from their anfractu- 
osities and their crests indented with snow. 

An hour more and we enter Yerona, a melancholy 
provincial town paved with cobble-stones and neglected. 
Many of the streets are deserted ; alongside of the 
bridges are piles of ordure descendifig into the stream. 
Eemains of old sculptures and of tarnished arabesques 



VERONA. 339 

run here and there along the facades ; the once pros- 
perous air of the city is evident but it is now fallen. 

Beneath a parasite crust of sheds and shops an old 
Eoman amphitheatre, the largest and best preserved 
after those of Msmes and Eome, uplifts its vigorous 
cui'ves. Lately it contained fifty thousand spectators. 
When it possessed its wooden galleries I suppose it 
might have held seventy thousand ; there was room 
enough for the entire population of the place. In 
structure and in use the amphitheatre is the peculiar 
sign of Roman genius. Its enormous stones, here six 
feet long and three feet wide, its gigantic round arches, 
its stories of arcades one supporting the other, are 
capable, if left to themselves, of enduring to the day of 
judgment. Ai'chitecture, thus understood, possesses 
the solidity of a natural production. This edifice, seen 
from above, looks like an extinct crater. If one desires 
to build for eternity it must be in this fashion. On the 
other hand, however, this monument of grandiose com- 
mon sense is an institution of permanent murder. We 
know that it steadily afforded wounds and death as a 
spectacle to the citizens ; that, on the election of a 
duumvir or an aedile, this bloody sport formed the prin- 
cipal interest and the prime occupation of a municipal 
city ; that the candidates and the magistrates multi- 
plied them at their own cost to win popular favor ; that 
benefactors of the city bequeathed vast sums to the 
curia to perpetuate it ; that, in a paltry town hke Pom- 
peii, a grateful duumvir caused thirty-five pairs of 
gladiators to contend at one representation ; that a 
polished, learned and humane man attended these 
massacres as we of to-day attend a play ; that this di- 
version was regular, universal, authorized and fashion- 
able and that people resorted to the amphitheatre as 
we now resort to the playhouse, the club or the cafe. 
A species of being is there encountered with which we 
are no longer familiar, that of the pagan reared in the 



330 LOMBAKDT. 

gymnasium and on the battle-field, that is to say, ac- 
customed to cultivating his body and to conquering 
men, pushing to extremes his admirable physical and 
militant institutions and, traversing the activity of the 
palestrum and of civic heroism, ending in the indolence 
of the baths and in the ferocities of the circus. Every 
civilization has its own degeneracy as well as its own 
vitalizing forces. For us christians, spiritualists, who 
preach peace and cultivate our understanding, we have 
the miseries of a cerebral and bourgeois existence, the 
enervation of the muscles, the excitement of the brain, 
small rooms on the fourth story, our sedentary and ar- 
tificial habits, our saloons and our theatres. 

This amphitheatre is simply a relic : traces of Eome 
are scant in the north of Italy ; the originality and the 
interest of the place consist of its mediaeval monu- 
ments. The impression it makes on the mind is an 
odd one, because the Italian mediaeval epoch is mixed 
and ambiguous. Most of the churches, Santa-Anasta- 
sia, San Fermo-Maggiore, the Duomo, San Zenone, are 
of a peculiar style called Lombard, intermediary between 
the Italian and the Gothic styles, as if the Latin and 
the German artist had met in order to oppose and har- 
monize their ideas in the same edifice. But the work 
is genuine ; in every monument of a primitive era we 
realize the lively invention of a budding spirit. Among 
these diverse churches the Duomo may be taken as the 
type ; this edifice, like the old basilicas, is a house sur- 
mounted by a smaller one and both presenting a gable 
frontage. We recognize the antique temple raised for 
the purpose of supporting another on the top of it. 
Straight lines ascend in pairs, parallel as in later archi- 
tecture, in order to be capped with angles. These 
lines, however, are more extended, and the angles are 
sharper than in the latin architecture ; five superposed 
belfries render them still more attenuated. The new 
spirit evidently appreciates less a solid posture than a 



VEEONA. 331 

bold flight ; the old forms are reduced by it and con- 
verted to new uses. The ranges of columns and the 
two borderings of arcades let into the fa9ade are sim- 
ply small ornaments, the vestiges of an abandoned art, 
like the rudimentary bones of the arm in the whale, or 
in the dolphin. On all sides we detect the ambiguous 
spirit of the twelfth century, the remains of Roman 
tradition, the bloom of a new invention, the elegance 
of an architecture still preserved and the gropings of 
the new-born sculpture. A projecting porch repeats 
the simple lines of the general arrangement and its 
small columns, supported by griffins, rise above and 
are joined into each other like sections of cordage. 
This porch is original and charming ; but its crouching 
figures and its groups around the Virgin are hydro- 
cephalous monkeys. 

Gothic forms prevail in the interior, not yet complete, 
but indicated and already christian. I cannot get rid 
of the idea that ogives, arcades and foliations are alone 
capable of imparting mystic sublimity to a church ; if 
they are lacking the church is not christian ; it becomes 
so as soon as they appear. This one is already mourn- 
fully grave like the first act of a tragedy. Clusters of 
small columns combine in reddish pillars, ascend into 
capitals bound with a triple crown of flowers, spread 
out into arcades embroidered with twining wreaths and 
finally end in the wall of the flank in a sort of terminal 
tuft. On the flank the ogive of the chapel is enveloped 
in a covering of leaves and complicated ornaments 
joined together at the top in a spire and surmounted 
by a statuette. Most of the figures have the grave 
candor and the sincere and too marked expression of 
the fifteenth century. A choir in the background, built 
by San-Micheli, protrudes its belt of ionic columns 
even into the nave. The various ages of the church 
are thus shown in its various ornaments ; its structure, 
however, and its grand forms still secure to the whole 



333 LOMBAKDY. 

the sober simplicity and bright originality of primitive 
invention, and there is pleasure in contemplating a 
healthy architectural creation belonging to a distinct 
species and found nowhere else. 

On trying to define the ruling type in other churches 
resembling this one we find the two superposed gables 
of Pisa and Sienna and the pointed canopies which Pisa 
and Sienna lack. This combination is unique : these 
canopies, over full walls and elegant lines, almost black 
and covered with mstj scales, bristle against the blue 
sky with then- ferruginous points as if they were the 
remains of so many fossil carcasses. Sometimes a bevy 
of canopies crowd around the central cone or are perched 
on all sides on the crests and on the angles of the roofs, 
the ruddy tone of the bricks of which the edifice is built 
adding to the singularity of their rough and deadened 
forms. It is a unique growth like that of a pineapple 
slowly elongated and incrusted with smoky ochre. It 
is one that is peculiar to the country. Between the 
Eoman arcade, now disappearing, and the Gothic ogive 
just indicatmg itself, it gathered around it the sympa- 
thies of men for two or three centuries. They discov- 
ered it at the first step they made out of savage Hfe and 
many are the traits which render visible the barbarity 
from which they issued. The portal of Santa Anastasia 
displa^^s heads one half as large as the body ; others 
are without necks or have them dislocated ; almost all 
are grotesque ; a Christ on the cross has the broken 
and bent-back paws of a frog. — Centuries, however, in 
their progress, dragged art out of its swaddling-clothes 
and, in later chapels, the sculpture becomes adult. 
Santa Anastasia is filled with figures of the fifteenth 
century, occasionally a little clumsy, stiff and too real, 
but so expressive that the perfection of the masters 
appears languid alongside of their animated deformity. 
In the choir a bush of thorns and large expanded flow- 
ers, twenty-five feet high, envelop a tomb in which 



VEEONA. 333 

stand rude figures of men-at-arms. In the Miniscalco 
cliapel, amidst interlacings of elegant arabesques, you 
see four standing statuettes placed in couples above 
eacli other between the red columns supporting an 
entablature : they are those of a young man, a some- 
what meagTe, candid young girl, and two bald-headed 
doctors roughly chiselled the whole similar to the 
figures of Perugino. The chapel Pellegrini, wainscoted 
entirely with terra-cotta, is a large sculptured picture 
in compartments, w^here evangelical subjects unite and 
separate with admu-able richness and originality of 
imagination ; two files of single figures, each under an 
ornamented ogive canopy, divide the various scenes, 
each of wdiich is enclosed in a fi'ame of spiral columns 
wdth acanthus capitals. In this graceful and overflow- 
ing decoration, among these fancies half gothic half 
greek, we find, along wdth the beautiful groupings of 
the new art, the sin.cerest and simplest expressions, 
virgins of infantile innocence and beaming beauty, 
saintly women weeping with the touching abandonment 
of genuine grief, noble, erect young forms displaying 
the sentiment of human vitality with the sincerity of 
the recent invention and a cuirassed St. Michael as spir- 
ited and simple as an ancient ephebos. — Never w^as 
sculpture more fecund, more spontaneous and, in my 
opinion, more beautiful than in the fifteenth century. 

We take a cab and drive to the end of the town, to 
San Zenone, the most curious of these churches, begun 
by a son of Charlemagne, restored by the German em- 
peror Otho I., but belonging almost entirely to the 
twelfth century.* Some portions, as, for instance, the 
sculptures of a door, belong to the more ancient times ; 
except at Pisa I have seen none so barbarous. The 
Christ at the pillar looks like a bear mounting a tree ; 
the judges, the executioners and the personages belong- 



* The spire is of the year 1045. 



^^^ LOMBARDY. 

ing to other biblical stories resemble the gross cari- 
catures of clumsy Germans in their overcoats. In an- 
other place Christ on his throne has no skull, the entire 
face being absorbed by the chin ; the wondering, pro- 
jecting eyes are those of a frog, while around him the 
angels with their wings are bats with human heads. 
The heads throughout are enormous, disproportionate 
and pitiful ; below badly jointed limbs toss about float- 
ing bellies. These figures all swim through the air on 
different planes in the most insensate manner, as if the 
sculptor or founder aimed to excite a laugh. To this 
low level did art fall during the Carlovingian decadence 
and the Hungarian invasions. — In the interior of the 
cTiurch you follow the strange and whimsical gropings 
of an experimental mind, catching glimpses of daylight 
now and then from its obscure depths. The crypt, 
belonging to the ninth century, low and lugubrious, is 
a forest of columns crowned with shapeless figures ; 
sculptures still more shapeless cover an altar. To this 
damp cavern people resorted to pray at the saint's tomb 
for the expulsion of devastators and of the yelling cav- 
alry which, wherever it passed, left a desert behind it. 
Higher up in the church, a curious altar is supported 
by crouched brutes resembling lions ; from their bodies 
of red marble spring four small columns of the same 
material which, half way up, twine and interlace around 
each other like serpents, and then, once knotted, resume 
their rectilinear projection up to the corinthian capital. 
Farther on Christ and his apostles in colored marble, 
frescoes of the fourteenth century, a St. George with 
his heraldic buckler, a Magdalen in drapery of her own 
hair, range themselves along the wall, some lank and 
grotesque like wooden dolls, others grave, enveloped in 
the grand folds of their robes and with hieratic ele- 
vation and austerity. How slow progress is, and how 
many centuries are necessary for man to comprehend 
the human figure ! 



VERONA. 



335 



The architecture, more simple, is more precocious. It 
is satisfied with a few straight or curved lines, a few 
symmetrical and clearly defined planes ; it does not 
exact, like sculpture, knowledge of receding rotundi- 
ties ^nd a study of the complications and reliefs of the 
oval. Uncultivated natures confined to a few powerful 
sentiments can be affected by and reveal themselves 
through it ; it is perhaps their proper medium of ex- 
pression. In half-barbarous ages indeed, in the times 
of Philippe Augustus and Herodotus, it obtained its 
original forms, while complete civilization, instead of 
sustaining it and developing it like other arts has 
rather impoverished or corrupted it. Within as with- 
out, San Zenone is grand in character, austere and sim- 
ple : we here realize the Eoman basilica making itself 
Christian. The central nave rests on round columns 
whose barbarous capitals, enveloped with foliage, 
lions, dogs and serpents, sustain a line of circular ar- 
cades ; on these arcades rises a grand naked wall bear- 
ing the arch. Thus far the structure is Latin ; but the 
nave, through its extreme height, fills the soul with a 
religious emotion. Its curious ceiling consists of a 
triple roof trellised with dark wood and inlaid with 
little squares starred with white and gold, its super- 
posed hollows extending along with a wild and unex- 
pected fancy. Beneath it, the pavement, lower down, 
connects the portal and the choir by high steps pro- 
vided with balustrades, while the differences of level 
break up and complicate all the lines. The capricious 
imagination of the middle-ages begins to introduce 
itself into the regularity of ancient architecture in 
order to disturb planes, multiply forms and transpose 
effects. 

The same imagination reigns, but this time sovereign 
and complete, within an iron railing situated near 
Santa Maria I'Antica, and which is the most curious 
monument in Verona. Here are the tombs of the an- 



836 



LOMBAEDY. 



cient sovereigns of the city, tlie Scaligers, who, either 
by turns or always, tyrants and warriors, pohticians 
and sages, assassins and exiles, great men and fratri- 
cides, furnished, hke the princes of Ferrara, Milan and 
Padua, examples of that powerful and immoral genius 
peculiar to Italy and which Machiavelli has described 
in his " Prince" or displayed in his Life of Castruccio. 
The first five tombs display the simplicity and heavi- 
ness of heroic times. It seems that man after having 
combated, slain and founded demands only of the sep- 
ulchre a spot for repose ; the hollow stone that receives 
his bones is as solid and worn as the iron armor which 
protected his flesh. It consists of an enormous and 
massive tub formed out of a naked rock, a single red 
block, and placed on three short supports of marble. 
A single slab, thick and without ornaments, forms the 
cover, as Hamlet says " the ponderous jaws" of the 
tomb. This is a true funereal monument, a monstrous 
rude coffer, built for eternity. 

Out of this savage world, in which the ferocities of 
Ecclin and his destroyers were let loose, an art appears. 
Dante and Petrarch were welcomed at this court, now 
learned and magnificent ; the Gothic style, which from 
the mountain- tops descends on Milan, and on all sides 
impregnates Italian architecture, displays itself here 
pure and complete in the monuments of its latest lords. 
Two of these sepulchres, especially that of Cane Signo- 
rio (1375) are as precious in their way as the cathedrals 
of Milan and Assisi. The rich and delicate comming- 
ling of twining, excavated and sharp forms, the trans- 
formation of dull matter into a filagree of lace, into the 
multiple and the complex, is the aspiration of this new 
taste. At the loot of the memorial small columns with 
curious capitals connect through a sort of armorial turban 
in order to bear on a platform the storied tomb and 
the sleeping statue of the dead. From this basis springs 
a circle of other small columns whose arcades laced 



VERONA. 337 

with trefoils, join in a dome crowned witli foliated lan- 
terns and with canopies tapering ujDward and cluster- 
ing together like the vegetation of thorns. On the sum- 
mit, Cane Signorio, seated on his horse, seems the ter- 
minal statue of a rich specimen of the jeweller's art. 
Processions of small sculptured figures deck the tomb. 
Six statuettes in armor, with bare heads, cover the 
edges of the platform, and each of the niches of the 
second story contains its figure of an angel. This 
crowd of figures and this efflorescence rise p3Tamidi- 
cally like a bouquet in a vase while the sky shines 
through the infinite interstices of the scaffolding. In 
order to complete the impression each tomb by itself, 
as well as the entire enclosure, is shut in by one of 
those railings, so original and so intricate, in which 
mediaeval art delighted, a sort of thread of arabesques 
wrought with four-leafed trefoils, united with halberd 
irons and crowned with triple-pointed thorn-leaves. It 
is to this side, toward the prodigality and interlacing 
of light capricious forms, that the imagination wholly 
turned. Figures, in fact, although well-proportioned, 
display nothing of the ideal. Cane is simply a laborious- 
ly exercised warrior. The statuettes in armor have 
that air of a gi^ave sacristan so frequent in mediaeval 
sculptures. The Yirgin, sculptured in relief on the tomb, 
is a simple, gross, stolid peasant-woman and the infant 
Christ has the big head, lank limbs and protuberant 
belly of actual bantlings that do nothing else but suck, 
sleep and cry. The artist knows only how to copy the 
human form servilely and dolefully ; his invention ex- 
pends itself in other directions. I was thinking by 
contrast of a double Renaissance tomb which I had 
just seen in the sacristy of San-Fermo-Maggiore, that 
of Jerome Turriano, so simple, so elegant, so richly 
and so healthily imaginative ; where small fluted col- 
umns form a medium space between medium masses, 
where the whiteness of marble is enhanced by the dim- 

15 



338 LOMBARDY. 

mer tints of bronze, where sphinxes, fawns and nymphs 
in bas-relief caper amidst the flowers. One cannot 
fail to realize that mediaeval art so creative and so vig- 
orous, has something of the strained and divergent. 
The truth is it is a morbid art : a cheerful and healthy 
mind could not accommodate itself to such a minute, 
intricate and fragile ornamentation which seems so inca- 
pable of self-endurance and which demands a sheath to 
protect it. We require monuments to be solidly based 
and to have a consistency of their own. The imagina- 
tion tires at being always kept suspended in the air, 
diverted in its flight, caught by sharp angles and perched 
on the points of needles. We retrace our steps to see 
the Piazza dei Signori, where there is a charming 
little Renaissance palace, resting on a portico of arcades 
and Corinthian columns. We enjoy the finesse of its 
small columns and the elegant rotundities of its balus- 
trades. The eyes wander over the sculptures twining 
around the coins and cornices of the windows ; branches 
loaded with leaves, stately flowers springing out of 
an amphora, Roman cuirasses, cornucopias, medallions, 
every form and every emblem an artist would like to 
surround himself with in order to make of his life a 
fete. We contemplate the two statues in the shell 
niches, a Virgin like the Madonna of the " Last Judg- 
ment," gathering herself up and turning her shoulder 
with all the charm of Florentine finesse. I sup- 
pose that this constitutes the pleasure of travelling; 
one's ideas are reconsidered and confirmed and de- 
veloped and constantly corrected according as new 
cities present to the mind new aspects of the same 
objects. 

Still one becomes weary. I saw too many pictures 
at Yenice to dwell on those in this place. There is, how- 
ever, a Pinacotheca at the Palazzo Pompeii filled with 
the works of the Veronese masters. A number of the 



VALUE OF COSTUME. od» 

early painters, Falconetto, Turodi, Crivelli, are ranged 
in the order of tlieir epoch. One of them, Paolo Mo- 
rando, who died in 1522, fills an entire room with his 
works, somewhat stiff, realistic and finished to excess, 
in which, among the figures copied from Hfe, are beauti- 
ful angels crowned with laurels and announcing the 
advent of ideal form, whilst a glow of color and skilful 
gradations of tints indicate Venetian taste. All these 
painters should be studied ; they are the beginnings of 
a local flora ; — but there are days when every effort to 
fix the attention is disagreeable, when one is only capa- 
ble of enjoying himself. One turns away from the pre- 
cursors for two or three of the pictures by the masters. 
There is one by Bonifazio, representing the rendition 
of Yerona to the Doge, brilliant and decorative, in 
which the freest imitation of actual life is enlivened and 
embellished with every magnificence of color. Seignors 
in the costumes of the time of Francis I., in lustrous 
white silk and decked with flowers, appear on one side 
of the Doge, whilst on the other sit the councillors in 
the waving pomp of their grand red robes. Costume, in 
those days, is so fine that it alone affords material for 
pictures ; in every epoch it is the most spontaneous and 
most significant of the works of art ; for it indicates the 
way in which man comprehends the beautiful and how 
he desires to adorn his life ; rely upon it that if it is not 
picturesque, picturesque tastes are wanting. When peo- 
ple truly love pictures they begin to depict their own per- 
sons ; this is why the age of dress-coats and black trow- 
sers is poorly qualified for the arts of design. Compare 
our vestments of a respectable undertaker or of a practi- 
cal engineer to the superb portrait of Pasio Guariento by 
Paul Veronese (1556). He stands in steel armor rayed 
with black lines and damasked with gold. His casque, 
gauntlets and lance are by his side. He is a man of 
action, vaHant and gay, although quite old ; his beard 



340 LOMBAKDY. 

is gray, but his cheeks possess the somewhat yinous 
tints of jovial habits. His mihtarj pomp and his sim- 
ple expression harmonize ; everything about the man 
holds together, within and without ; he fashions his 
own costume, furniture and architecture, his entire out- 
side decoration according to his inward necessities ; 
but in the long-run the decoration reacts on him. I am 
satisfied that an armor hke this would convert any 
man into a heroic ox. To fight well, to drink well and 
dine well and to display himself superbly on horseback 
was all he cared to do. A cavalier's life and pic- 
turesque sensations absorbed him entirely ; he did not, 
like us closet-folks, require a learned subtle psychology ; 
it would have set him yawning ; he was himself too 
slightly comphcated to incline to our analyses. On ac- 
count of this the central art of the century is not litera- 
ture but painting. — In this art Veronese, like Van Dyck, 
reaches that final moment when primitive impulse and 
energy begin to be tempered by the breath of worldly 
ease and dignity. People still sometimes wear the 
great sword but use the rapier ; they don at need the 
soHd battle-armor but more willingly deck themselves 
with the rich pourpoint and the laces of the court ; a 
gentlemanly elegance comes to transform and brighten 
the ancient energy of the soldier. The Venetian Hke 
the Fleming paints that noble and poetic society which, 
placed on the confines of the feudal and the modern 
ages, preserves the seigneurial spirit without maintain- 
ing gothic rudeness and attains to the urbanity of the 
palace without falling into the insipidity of drawing- 
room poKteness. By the side of Titian, Giorgione and 
Tintoretto, Veronese seems a delicate cavalier amongst 
robust plebeians. Here, in a fresco representing Music, 
the heads of the women possess charming sweetness ; 
his voluptuousness is aristocratic, and often refined ; 
the diversion of fetes, the variety and the brilliancy of 
a smiling seducing beauty more readily respond to his 



VERONESE. 341 

mind than the force and simplicity of bodies and of 
athletic actions. He himself saluted Titian with respect 
*' as the father of art," while Titian, on the square of 
San-Marco, affectionately embraced him, recognizing in 
him the head of a new generation. 



CHAPTEK II. 

LAGO DI GAEDA.— MILAN.— STEEETS AND CHAEACTERS.— THE CATHE- 
• DEAL.— MYSTIC FIGUEES AKD VEGETAL ANALOGIES OF THE 
GOTHIC— SAN AMBEOGIO. 

Neak Desenzano we come in sight of the Lago di 
Garda. It is quite blue, of that strange blue peculiar 
to rocky depths ; rugged mountains, marbled with ght- 
tering snow, enclose it within their curves and advance 
their promontories into the middle of the lake. With 
all their asperities thej look genial ; an azure veil, as 
aerial and delicate as the finest gauze, envelops their 
nudity and tempers their rudeness. After leaving Ye- 
rona they are visible only through this veil. This soft 
azure occupies the half of space ; the rest is a tender 
and charming green prairie, rendered still softer by the 
faint yellow tinge overspreading the spring growth with 
the freshness of new being. / 

At Desenzano the train stops on the very margin of 
the lake. Its lustrous slaty surface buries itself between 
two long rocky shores seeming to be the embossed and 
jagged sides of a fantastic river. It forms, indeed, the 
marble ewer into which, before they decline, the Alps 
collects and retains its springs. On the projections of 
this shore we see villages, churches and ancient fort- 
resses extending down into the water, and, in the 
background, a loftier wall lifting into the sky its snowy 
fringe silvered with sunlight. Nothing can be gayer 
and nobler. From the lake to the firmament all these 
azure tints melt into each other graduated by diversi- 
ties of distance and reminding one of the blue rocky 
landscapes which Leonardo gives in the backgrounds 
of his pictures. ^ 



MILAN. 343 

The rest of the country as far as Milan is a vast 
orchard replete with crops, artificial fields and fruit- 
trees, where the mulberry, already quite green, rounds 
its tops amidst the vines and where petty canals bear 
life to the vegetation, so blooming and so prolific as to 
suggest an idea of suj)er abundant prosperity ; but in 
order to relieve this fertility of any vulgar or monoto- 
nous aspect, the Alps rise on the right in the evening 
glow, like a file of vast stationary clouds, v 

Blilan, May 4. — One realizes that he is in a rich and 
gay land. The city is grand and even luxurious with 
its monumental gates and broad streets lined with 
palaces, full of vehicles and lively without being fever- 
ish like Paris or London. It is situated on a plain ; 
the lakes, canals and river easily supply it with pro- 
visions from the well-cultivated and generously pro- 
ductive country. Its buildings are as pleasing as its 
environs. You enter the waiting-rooms of a railroad 
station ; you see between the mouldings and their 
ornaments an azure ceiling full of floating clouds. The 
cafes are well patronized ; ices and coffee cost four or 
five sous ; an omnibus fare is two sous. Admission to 
both of the operas is but one or two francs ; common 
people and the women are quite numerous in the par- 
terre. Many of the women are beautiful, and almost 
all gay and good-humored ; they walk well, having a 
spruce and attractive air ; with their lively ph3^siogno- 
my, fine, cleanly chiselled head, and vibrating sonorous 
accent they stand out instantaneously in bold relief. 
Nothing can be prettier than the black veil serving as a 
coiffure; a circle of silver bodkins placed around the 
chignon forms a cro^^Ti. Stendhal, who lived here a 
long time, says that this city is the land of good-nature 
and pleasure : to regard labor and serious preoccupa- 
tions as a load to be reduced as much as possible, to 
enjoj^ themselves, to laugh, to go on country pic-nics, 
to get in love and not in sighing fashion, such is the 



344 LOMBAEDY. 

way in \vliic]i they regard life. I liave had two or three 
interesting conversations, in this connection, A\ith my 
travelling companions ; all of them terminated in the 
same creed- One of these, half-bourgeois, another a 
lawyer, each remarked to me : " Ho la sventura cVessere 
ammogliato, — it is true I married my wife for love and 
that she is pretty and prudent, but I have lost my 
liberty." 

A transient visitor like myself can have no opinion on 
social matters ; he can only talk about monuments. 
There are three conspicuous ones at Milan — the cathe- 
dral and two picture galleries. 

The cathedral, at the first sight, is bewildering. 
Gothic art, transported entire into Italy at the close of 
the middle ages," attains at once its triumph and its 
extravagance. Never had it been seen so pointed, so 
highly embroidered, so complex, so overcharged, so 
strongly resembling a piece of jewelry ; and as, instead 
of coarse and lifeless stone, it here takes for its material 
the beautiful lustrous Italian marble, it becomes a pure 
chased gem as precious through its substance as through 
the labor bestowed on it. The whole church seems to 
be a colossal and magnificent crystallization, so splen- 
didly do its forest of sj)ires, its intersections of mould- 
ings, its population of statues, its fringes of fretted, 
hollowed, embroidered and open marblework, ascend in 
multiple and interminable bright forms against the 
pure blue sky. Truly is it the mystic candelabra of 
visions and legends, with a hundred thousand branches 
bristling and overflowing with sorrowing thorns and 
ecstatic roses, with angels, virgins, and martyrs upon 
every flower and on every thorn, with infinite myriads 
of the triumphant Church springing from the ground 
pyramidically even into the azure, with its millions of 
blended and vibrating voices mounting upward in a 

* Beffun in 1386. Its architects were Germaus and Frenchmen. 



THE CATHEDRAL. 345 

single shout, hosannah ! Moved by sucli sentiments we 
quicHy comprehend why architecture violated the 
ordinary conditions of matter and of its endurance. It 
no longer has an end of its own ; little does it care 
whether it be a soHd or a fragile construction ; it is not 
a shelter but an expression ; it does not concern itself 
with present fragility nor with the restorations of the 
future ; it is born of a sublime frenzy and constitutes 
a sublime frenzy ; so much the worse for the stone that 
disintegrates and for generations that are to commence 
the work anew. The object is to manifest an intense 
reverie and a unique transport ; a certain moment in 
life is worth all the rest of hfe put together. The 
mystic philosophers of the esivlj centuries sacrificed 
everything to the hope of once or twice transcending in 
the course of so many long years the limits of human 
existence and of being translated for an instant up to 
the ineffable One, the source of the universe. 

We enter, and the impression deepens. "What a 
difference between the religious power of such a church 
and that of St. Peter's at Rome ! One exclaims to him- 
self, this is the true christian temple ! Four rows of 
enormous eight-sided pillars, close together, seem like 
a serried hedge of gigantic oaks. Their strange capi- 
tals, bristling with a fantastic vegetation of pinnacles, 
canopies, foliated niches and statues, are like venerable 
trunks crowned wdth delicate and pendent mosses. 
They spread out in great branches meeting in the vault 
overhead, the intervals of the arches being filled with 
an inextricable network of foliage, thorny sprigs and 
light branches, twining and intertwining, and figuring 
the aerial dome of a mighty forest. As in a great wood, 
the lateral aisles are almost equal in height to that of 
the centre, and, on all sides, at equal distances apart, 
one sees ascending around him the secular colonnades. 
Here truly is the ancient germanic forest, as if a 
reminiscence of the religious groves of Irmensul. Light 

15* 



346 LOMBAEDY. 

pours in transformed by green, yellow and purple 
panes, as if tlirougii the red and orange tints of 
autumnal leaves. This, certainly, is a complete archi- 
tecture like that of Greece, having, like that of Greece, 
its root in vegetable forms. The Greek takes the trunk 
of the tree, dressed, for his type ; the German the en- 
tire tree with all its leaves and branches. True archi- 
tecture, perhaps, always springs out of vegetal nature, 
and each zone may have its own edifices as well as 
plants; in this way oriental architectures might be 
comprehended, — the vague idea of the slender palm 
and of its bouquet of leaves with the Arabs, and the 
vague idea of the colossal, prolific, dilated and brist- 
ling vegetation of India. In any event I have never 
seen a church in which the aspect of northern forests 
was more striking, or where one more involuntarily 
imagines long alleys of trunks terminating in glimpses 
of daylight, curved branches meeting in acute angles, 
domes of irregular and commingling foliage, universal 
shade scattered with lights through colored and di- 
aphanous leaves. Sometimes a section of yellow panes, 
through which the sun darts, launches into the obscu- 
rity its shower of rays and a portion of the nave glows 
like a luminous glade. A vast rosace behind the choir, 
a window with tortuous branchings above the entrance, 
shimmer with the tints of amethyst, ruby, emerald and 
topaz like leafy labyrinths in which lights from above 
break in and diffuse themselves in shifting radiance. 
Near the sacristy a small door-top, fastened against the 
wall, exposes an infinity of intersecting mouldings sim- 
ilar to the delicate meshes of some marvellous twining 
and climbing plant. A day might be passed here as in 
a forest, the mind as calm and as occupied in the 
presence of grandeurs as solemn as those of nature, 
before caprices as fascinating, amidst the same inter- 
mingling of sublime monotony and inexhaustible 
fecundity, before contrasts and metamorphoses of light 



THE CATHEDKAL. 347 

as rich and as unexpected. A mystic reverie, combined 
with a fresh sentiment of northern nature, such is the 
source of gothic architecture. 

At the second look one feels the exaggerations and 
the incongruities. The gothic is of the late epoch and 
is inferior to that of Assisi ; outside, especially, the 
grand lines disappear under the ornamentation. You 
see nothing but pinnacles and statues. Many of these 
statues are of the seventeenth century, sentimental and 
gesticulating, in the taste of Bernini ; the main windows 
of the fagade bear the imprint of the Renaissance and 
constitute a blemish. In the interior St. Charles Bor- 
romeo and his successors have in several places plas- 
tered it with the affectations of the decadence. A 
monument like this transcends man's forces ; five hun- 
dred years of labor has been bestowed on it, and it is 
not finished yet. When a work requires so long a 
time for its completion the inevitable revolutions of the 
mental state leave on it their discordant traces : here 
appears that true characteristic of the middle ages, the 
disjDroportion between desire and power. Criticism, 
however, before such a work is out of place. One 
drives it from his mind like an intruder ; it remains on 
the threshold and does not soon attempt to re-enter. 
The eyes of their own accord discard ,ugly features ; in 
order to prolong their pleasure they fix themselves on 
some of the tombs of the gi'eat century, that of Cardi- 
nal Carraciulo (1538) and especially, before the Chapel 
of the Presentation, that of the sculptor Bambaja, an 
unknown man of the time of Michael Angelo. The 
diminutive Virgin is ascending a flight of steps amongst 
superb, erect forms of men and women ; one meagre 
old man is looking at her, and his bony head, in its 
enormous frizzled beard, has a spirited and wild aspect ; 
a woman on the left, between the columns, has the ani- 
mated beauty of the most blooming youth. Farther 
on, another Virgin between two female saints is a mas- 



348 



LOMBAKDY. 



terpiece of simplicity and force. We do not know and 
cannot fully estimate the genius of the Renaissance ; 
Italy has only exported, or allowed to be taken, frag- 
ments of its work ; books have popularized a few 
names ; but, for the sake of abridgment, others have 
been omitted. Below, and by the side of great known 
names, is a multitude of others equal to them. 

Another celebrated church is cited, that of San- 
Ambrogio, founded in the fourth century by St. Ambrose 
and completed or restored later in the Roman style, 
supplied with gothic arches toward the year 1300 and 
strewn with divers bits — doors, pulpit and altar decora- 
tions — during the intermediary ages. An oblong court 
precedes it through a double portico. A large square 
tower flanks it -^dth its sombre and reddened mass. 
Remnants of sculpture plastered on the wall render the 
porticoes a sort of defaced and incoherent memorial. 
The old edifice itself raises its fretted gable upon a 
double story of arcades. The portal is peculiar, being 
striped and mottled with fine stone ornaments, consist- 
ing of networks of thread, rosaces, and of small 
squares filled with foliage ; on the columns we see 
crosses, heads and bodies of animals, a decoration of 
an unknown species."^ These works of the darkest cen- 
turies of the middle ages always, after the first repulsion, 
leave a powerful impression. We feel in them, as in the 
saints' legends accumulated from the seventh to the tenth 
centuries, the bewilderment of an appalled understand- 
ing, the awkwardness of clumsy hands, the alteration and 
discordance of decrepit faculties, the gropings of a child- 
ish and senile intellect which has forgotten everything 
and as yet learned nothing new, its dolorous and semi- 
idiotic uneasiness before vaguely conceived forms, its 
impotent effort to stammer forth an anxious thought, 

*■ Compare the cloister of St. Tropliime at Aries, one of the most 
cmious and most perfect of mediaeval monuments. 



SAN AMBROGIO. o49 

its first tottering steps in a profound cave where all is 
confusion and vacHlation in the pallid rajs of da3'liglit. 
In the interior heavy pillars, composed of a mass of 
columns, support on their barbaric capitals a file of 
round arcades and low arches, and, at the far end, in 
the apsis, are meagre bjzantine figures gleaming on 
gold. Under the pulpit a tomb, supposed to be that of 
Stilicon, is sculptured with coarse hunting-scenes where 
beasts of uncertain species, it may be dogs or croco- 
diles, are pursuing and biting each other; the decline 
of art is not greater than in the monument of Placidia 
at Ravenna. We look up and we see in the sculptures 
of the pulpit the first dawn of the Renaissance. It is 
a work of the twelfth century, a sort of long box rest- 
ing on columns like the pulpits of Nicholas of Pisa. 
The figures sculptured on it represent the Last Supper ; 
eleven personages seen in front view and with their two 
arms before them, all repeat the same posture; the 
heads are real, and even carefully studied, but quite 
bourgeois and vulgar. Between this early gleam of 
life and the formless chaos of the lower sepulchre, six 
centuries, perha23S, elapse ; — behold the time requisite 
for iQcubation ! No document exposes better than works 
of art the formations and metamorphoses of human 
civilization. 



CHAPTEE III. 

THE LAST SUPPER OF LEONARDO DA VINCI.— CHARACTER OP HIS 
PERSONAGES.— CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS GENIUS.— HIS SCHOOL.— 
LUINL— THE BRERA MUSEE.— THE AMBROSIAN LEBRARY. 

One church more is all that remains in my mind, 
that of Santa-Maria delle Grazie, a large round tower 
girdled by two galleries of small columns and resting 
on a square mass ; it is not the church however which 
one goes to see, but Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Sup- 
per," painted on a wall of the refectory, and which, to 
tell the truth, you do not see. Fifty years after its 
completion it became a ruin. In the last century it was 
entirely repainted, and, as it still scaled off, it was re- 
stored ten years ago. What is there now of Leonardo 
in this painting ? Less, perhaps, than in a master's car- 
toon transferred to canvas by his mediocre pupils. In 
one face, that of the Apostle Andrew,"^ the wry mouth 
is evidently spoilt. Only the general idea of the mas- 
ter can be seized ; its delicacies have disappeared. 
Still, among other traits, one can see without much 
trouble that the celebrated engraving by Morghen 
represents Christ as more melancholy and more spirit- 
ual, f The Christ of Leonardo has a sweet countenance 
but large, ample and divine ; his aim was not to portray 
a sad and tender dreamer but a type of humanity. In 
like manner the apostles with their strongly-marked 
features and speaking expressions are vigorous Italians 
whose excitable passions lead to pantomime. The pic- 
ture of Leonardo, like those of Raphael in the Vatican, 

* The third figure, beginning at the left. 

f Compare contemporary copies, those of Marco d'Oggione at the 
Brera, and that in the Louvre. 



LEONARDO DA VINCI. ' 351 

depicted, probably, beautiful physical life as understood 
in the Renaissance. But he added to it a peculiarity 
of his own, the expression of different temperaments 
patiently studied and sudden emotions arrested in 
their flight. On this account he must have devoted a 
couple of hours daily to the low class of the Borgo in 
order to give to his Judas the head of a sufficiently vile 
and vigorous rogue. 

Here, at Milan, he thought and lived the longest. 
His principal works should be here, but they have 
either been carried away or have perished. His great 
equestrian model in bronze, intended to commemorate 
the Duke Sforza, was cut to pieces by some gascon 
cross-bowmen. Nothing of his now remains but some 
manuscripts and a few sketches and studies. And yet, 
reduced as his work is, there is no other that is more 
striking. In the leading traits of his genius he is 
modern. There is in the Brera gallery by him a female 
head in red chalk which in depth and delicacy of ex- 
pression sui'passes the most perfect of pictures. It is 
not beauty alone he seeks, but rather individual origi- 
nality ; there is a moral personality and a delicacy of 
soul in his figures, the powerful emotion of the inner 
life slightly hollowing the cheeks and depressing the 
eyes. Two other studies in the Ambrosian library 
(Nos. 177, 178), especially that of a young female with 
drooping eyelids, are incomparable masterpieces. The 
nose and lips are not perfectly regular ; form alone does 
not occupy him ; the interior seems much more im- 
portant to him than the exterior. Under this exterior 
lives a real, but superior, soul endowed wdth faculties 
and passions still slumbering, whose unlimited powder 
glows in repose by the force of the maiden gaze, by the 
divine form of the brow and by the fulness and ampli- 
tude of the head superbly crowned with hair such as 
one never beholds. On examining his book of drawings 
in the Louvre, and calling to mind favorite figures in 



353 



LOMBAEDY. 



his authentic pictures, on reading the details of his life 
and character one perceives therein the same inward 
strife. The world, perhaps, contains no example of a 
genius so universal, so creative, so incapable of self- 
contentment, so athirst for the infinite, so naturally 
refined, so far in advance of his own and of subsequent 
ages. His countenances express incredible sensibility 
and mental power; they overflow with unexpressed 
ideas and emotions. Michael Angelo's personages 
alongside of his are simply heroic athletes ; Raphael's 
virgins are only placid children whose sleeping souls 
have not yet lived. His personages feel and thmk 
through every line and trait of their physiognomy ; 
some time is necessary in order to enter into com- 
munion with them : not that their sentiment is too 
slightly marked, on the contrary, it emerges from its 
whole investiture, but it is too subtle, too complicated, 
too far above and bej^ond the ordinary, too unfathom- 
able and inexplicable. Their immobility and silence 
lead one to divine two or three latent thoughts, and still 
others concealed behind the most remote ; we have a 
confused glimpse of their inner and secret world like an 
unknown delicate vegetation at the bottom of trans- 
parent waters. Their mysterious smile moves and 
disturbs one vaguely ; skeptical, epicurean, licentious, 
exquisitely tender, ardent or sad, what aspirations, 
what curiosities, how many disappointments still re- 
main to be discovered ! Occasionally among spirited 
young athletes, like Grecian gods, we find some ambigu- 
ous adolescent with a feminine body, slender and twin- 
ing with voluptuous coquetry like the hermaphrodites 
of the imperial epoch, and who seem, like them, to 
announce a more advanced, less healthy, almost morbid 
art, so eager for perfection and insatiable of happiness 
that, not content with endowing man with strength and 
woman with delicacy, it singularly confounds together 
and multiplies the beauty of both sexes, losing itself in 



LEONARDO DA VINCI. 353 

tlie reyeries and in the researches of ages of decadence 
and immorality. One goes far in pushing to extremes 
the craving for exquisite and deep emotions. Many 
men of this epoch, and notably this one, after repeated 
excursions through all the sciences, arts and pleasures, 
bring back from their sojourn in the midst of all ob- 
jects I know not what of surfeit, of resignation and of 
sorrow. They appear to us under these various aspects 
without wishing to be wholly abandoned. They halt 
before us ^vitll a semi-ironical and benevolent smile 
somewhat veiled. However expressive the painting 
may be it reveals nothing of their interior but a com- 
placent grace and superior genius ; it is only later, and 
through reflection, that we distinguish in the sunken 
orbits, in the drooping eyelids, in the faintly furrowed 
cheeks the infinite exigencies and mute anguish of an 
over-refined, nervous and prolific nature, the languor of 
exhausted felicities and the lassitude of insatiate desire. 
No artist has maintained so long and so complete an 
ascendancy over contemporary artists. Melzi, Salaino, 
Salario, Marco d'Oggione, Cesare da Cesto, Guadenzio 
Ferrari, Beltrafiio, Luini,* all proportionately to and in 
view of their faculties, remained true to the venerated 
and beloved master whose voice they had heard or 
whose traditions they had gathered ; and we find here 
in their works the developments of the thought which 
his too rare productions have not wholly brought to 
light. They repeat his figures ; in the Ambrosian 
library some of Luini's personages, — a female head, a 
small St. John kneeling with the infant Jesus against 
the Virgin, especially a Holy Family — seem to be de- 
signed or dictated by the master. They are much more 
delicate souls, much more capable of refined and power- 
ful emotions than the simply ideal figures of the " School 



* Rio, Histoire de VArt cliretien, Vol. III., Cli. XVI. It is uot certain 
that Luini was directly a pupil of Leonardo. 



854 



LOMBAEDY. 



of Athens ;" "^ no converse could be maintained with 
Haphael's personages ; they would at most utter two 
or three words in. a grave and melodious voice ; one 
would admire but not become enamored of them ; the 
sovereign and penetrating charm emanating from those 
of Leonardo and his pupil would not be realized. There 
is little flesh, for flesh denotes carnal life and indicates 
excessive nourishment ; the whole physiognomy lies in 
the features ; these are strongly marked, although deli- 
cate, so that through all its lineaments the countenance 
feels and thinks ; the chin is hollowed and often point- 
ed ; depressions and projections break the sculptural 
uniformity and exclude the idea of luxuriant health. 
The strange and indefinable smile of Monna Lisa 
gleams on her motionless lips. A floating penumbra, 
an intense and deep yellow hue, envelops the figures 
with its shadowiness and mystery ; at times the grace 
of vanishing contours and the luminous softness of in- 
fantile flesh seem to indicate the hand of Correggio.t 
The fulness of open daylight here would be discordant ; 
tender and dying tones, mellowness of light and shade, 
the soothing caress of a wandering and refreshing 
breeze are essential in order not to disturb such deli- 
cate bodies and such sensitive natures. Luini, in this 
particular, goes even beyond Leonardo. If he impairs, 
he softens him, if he has not, like him, the elevation 
and superiority " of another Hermes or of another 
Prometheus" J he attains to a still more feminine and 
more affecting finish. Even this is not enough ; he 
seeks elsewhere and strives to add to the spirit of his 
first the stjde of more modern masters. As to his fres- 
coes one would suppose that he had studied in Florence. 
In one of the lower halls of the Ambrosian library his 



* The cartoon of this picture is placed opposite, 
f No. 105, without the name of any artist. Luini was contempo- 
rary with and almost a townsman of Correggio. 
X Lomazzo. 



LUDsI. 355 

Christ crowned witli thorns is scourged by the execu- 
tioners ; a large curtain and four cokimns encircle the 
scene of suffering ; on each side, in symmetrical order, 
are two angels and three executioners ; in the distance 
is seen one of the disciples with the two Marys ; on the 
two flanks of the picture, a file of pious, kneeling alms- 
receivers in black robes, cause, through their realistic 
figures, the rhythmic attitudes and ideal forms of this 
evangelical event to be still better felt. In like manner, 
at the entrance of the Brera gallery, the twenty frescoes 
which, for the most part, represent the various stories 
of the Virgin, have the faintness of color, the simple 
expression and the serene nobleness of the figures of 
the Vatican. At one time it is a large Virgin accompa- 
nied by an aged man in a green mantle and by a young 
woman in a golden-yellow robe, and, at their feet, on 
the steps, a little angel who, with legs stretched apart, 
tunes his cithern with the motionless pose and the 
harmonious lines of the " Parnassus," or of the " Dis- 
pute of the Holy Sacrament." At another time, in the 
" Nativity of the Virgin," it is a couple of nimble young 
girls fetching water, and two aged women, so beautiful 
and so grave, that one imagines in looking at them, 
the corresponding scenes painted by Andrea del Sarto 
in the portico of Santa- Annunziata. Luini here seems 
to have adopted the precepts of the pure and learned 
school in which Raphael was formed, the perfection and 
moderation of which are best represented by the Frate 
and Andrea del Sarto ; the school which, founded by 
the goldsmiths, always subordinated expression and 
color to drawing ; which placed beauty in the dispo- 
sition of lines, and which, in the sobriety, elevation and 
judiciousness of its mind was the Athens of Italy. But 
here and there the form of a head, a delicate chin, large 
eyes still more enlarged by the arch of the eyebrow, 
some adorable infantile form, an air of intelligence, a 
more subtle charm, recalls Leonardo. The three great 



356 



LOMBARDY. 



Italian artists matured at Florence have all added 
something to paganism and to the Florentine Atticism, 
— the pious ingeniousness of Raphael brought by him 
from religious Umbria ; the tragic energy which Michael 
Angelo found in his own wrestling soul ; the exquisite 
and pensive superiority the example of which Leonardo 
bequeathed to his Lombard pupils. 

Two galleries more contain together six or seven 
hundred pictures, and the only prudent course for a 
man to pursue is to keep silent about them. I have 
only noted five or six of them, and first, the " Marriage 
of the Yirgin" by Baphael. He was twenty-one years 
old and copied, with a few alterations, a picture by 
Perugino which is in the Musee at Caen. It is an au- 
roral ray, the early dawn of his invention. The color 
is almost hard, and cut out in clean spots by dry con- 
tours. The moral type of the virile figures is still but 
indicated ; two youths and several young girls have the 
same round head, the same small eyes, the same lamb- 
like expression characteristic of choir-children or of 
communicants. He scarcely dares to venture ; his 
thought moves only in the twilight. But its virginal 
poesy is perfect. A broad open space extends behind 
the personages. In the background a rotund temple, 
furnished with porticoes, profiles its regular lines on 
the pure sky. The azure expands amply on all sides, 
as in the country around Assisi and Perugia ; the distant 
landscape, at first green, then blue, encircles the cere- 
mony with its serenity. With a simplicity which recalls 
hieratic compositions, the personages all stand in a row 
in the foreground of the picture ; their two groups cor- 
respond to each other on each side of the two spouses, 
and the high-priest forms the centre. Amidst this gen- 
eral repose of figures, of attitudes and of lines, the 
Yirgin, modestly inclining, and with her eyes downcast, 
half-hesitatingly advances her hand on which the priest 
is about to place the marriage ring. She does not 



COEKEGGIO. 357 

know what to do witli tlie other hand, and, with ador- 
able artlessness, she presses it close against her mantle. 
A light, diaphanous veil scarcely touches her exquisite 
blonde hair ; an angel could not have placed it on her 
with more becoming care and respect. She is, hoAv- 
ever, large, healthy and beautiful like a rural maiden, 
and near her a superb young woman in light red, 
draped in a green mantle, turns around with the pride 
of a goddess. Pagan beauty, the animated sentiment 
of an active and agile body, the spirit and taste of the 
Eenaissance, already peer out through monastic piety 
and placidity. 

The contrast is very great on contemplating the last 
of the great painters of the Renaissance, Correggio and 
his "Repose of the Virgin." The picture is signed Anto- 
nius Laetus,^ and, although there is doubt that it is by 
him, I venture to find it charming. Two young women, 
the Virgin and the infant Jesus, are under a tree 
almost black, in a sort of sombre relief which greatly 
enhances the extraordinary brilliancy of the heads. 
The straight and symmetrical lines have become wav- 
ing and curved. Figures, tranquil and slumbering, 
have abandoned sculptural regularity and noble sim- 
plicity. Now their disturbed look bewilders and 
excites ; their animation, their pride, their inno cence 
remind one of the nervous vivacity of birds. Still 
more winning and seductive than the Virgin is the 
young woman in a yellow robe who is kneeling by her, 
with a phial in her hand, among lights and half-lights 
of marvellous delicacy and splendor ; a kind of infantile 
sullenness imperceptibly swells her lip. After the 
virile figures expressing the energy of intact passions it 
remained to art, becoming exaggerated before declining, 
and to souls becoming over-refined before becoming 
relaxed, the cult of feminine grace, at one time sport- 

* Loetus the latin form of Allegri. 



358 



LOMBAEDY. 



ive and pretty, at another genial and penetrating, 
infinite in subtle and complex charms, alone capable of 
absorbing hearts to which action was interdicted, ap- 
pearing in Correggio like the softened glow of a flower 
blooming too early and then fading, or like the extreme 
maturity of a melting peach impregnated with evening 
sunshine. 

After him, the restoration of the Caracci does not 
stay the decadence. These artists, so learned, so 
ingenious, so painstaking, are either academic painters 
or painters by system. If they still create it is out- 
side of the proper field of painting, in moral expression. 
They produce interesting or affecting dramas or melo- 
dramas. Among twenty pictures of this school there 
is a celebrated one by Guercino of " Abraham expelling 
Hagar." Hagar is weeping with despair and indigna- 
tion ; but she masters herself and her feminine pride 
renders her rigid ; she will no longer allow Sarah her 
fortunate rival to feed on her grief. The latter displays 
the haughtiness of the legitimate wife who has driven 
away a mistress ; she affects dignity and yet glances 
out of one corner of her eye with malignant satisfac- 
tion. Abraham is a noble patriarch who is good at 
self-display, but empty-headed ; it was difiicult to find 
any other part for him. All this is of a spirituel stamp 
and would provide a Diderot with numerous pages; 
but psychology here assumes precedence of painting. 

How intact the Venetians maintain themselves and 
how faithful they alone are to the true point of view ! 
There are five or six Titians in the Ambrosian gallery, 
and as many Yeroneses at the Brera, which, with folds 
of stuffs, a curved body, a background of blue sky rayed 
with ruddy foliage, suffice for every craving of the eyes. 
A " Nativity" by Titian shows the Virgin under a species 
of rustic shed of dark wood toward which advance the 
three magi kings ; one of them almost an Ethiopian 
negro, comes forward in a green silken jacket wearing 



BONIFAZIO. 359 

on his head a sort of barbarous cap surmounted with 
an enormous red feather ; — imagine the effect, under this 
relief, of a sooty tint illuminated by three small lights, 
one on the eye, the other on the white teeth, and the 
other on the lobe of the ear. The second one, a big, 
bald well-fed potentate displays himself in a vast robe 
of yellow silk figured with gold. The third, an old 
warrior all in red, his sword by his side and standing, 
scarcely dares let his rude gray beard touch the end of 
the feet of the little infant. All these painters evidently 
copied with sincere pleasure surrounding pomps and 
festivals ; pedantry does not intrude itself to bridle 
them ; their pictures come to them through the impetus 
of a free instinct and not through the combinations of 
academic precepts. In this respect a " Moses in the 
Bulrushes," by Bonifazio would be amusing if it were 
not splendid. Fortunately no one here thinks of 
Moses ; the scene is simply a pleasure-party near Padua 
or Yerona for beautiful ladies and grand seigneurs. 
We see people in the gay costume of the day under 
spreading trees in a broad, mountainous country. The 
princess desires to take a promenade, accompanied by 
her full retinue of dogs, horses, monkeys, musicians, 
squires and ladies of honor. The rest of the cavalcade 
arrives in the distance. Those who have dismounted are 
enjoying the shade of the foliage and are indulging in a 
concert ; the seignors lie at the ladies' feet and are 
singing with their caps on their heads and their swords 
by their sides ; the ladies, smiling, are chatting while 
listening. Their robes of silk and of velvet, at one 
time red and striped with gold, at another sea-green or 
deep-blue, their sleeves puffed and slashed, form groups 
of magnificent tones against the depths of the foliage. 
They are at leisure and are enjoying life. Some of 
them are looking at the dwarf giving fruit to the mon- 
key, or at the little negro in a blue jacket holding the 
hounds in a leash. In their midst, and still more 



360 LOMBAEDY. 

gorgeous, like the leading jewel in a brooch, is the 
princess standing erect ; a rich surtoiit of blue velvet, 
open and fastened with diamond buttons, leaves visible 
her robe of autumnal hue : the chemise spangled with 
golden seeds enlivens with its whiteness the satiny flesh 
of the neck and chin, and pearls wind their soft light 
through the curls of her auburn tresses. 

All this dwindles before a sketch by Yelasquez, broad- 
ly executed with a few formless dashes of color. It is 
the bust of a dead monk, as large as life, of a sublime 
and fearful reality. He is not long dead, and the face 
is not yet earthy ; but the lips are pale and the eyes 
heavily closed; the stiffness of the neck breaks the. 
brown drapery. There is here nothing of the ideal; 
naked tragedy suffices and more too ; a ray of sunshine 
falls on the vulgar shaved mask, of one color, enveloped 
in the sombre folds of the cowl ; under that outward 
brilHancy the flight of the inner life becomes more 
tragic ; the man is now empty, and the livid, inert re- 
mains are only a shell. In vain the contracted brow 
bears the marks of an agonizing sweat ; the agony is 
just over and we now feel how heavy is the formidable 
hand of death. Under this hand the body has suddenly 
become a foul lump of clay, a pile of dust which, of 
itself, is about to disintegrate and retain only through 
a passing usurpation the imprint of the vanished 
spirit. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

COMO AND THE LAKE.— SCEXERY.— THE CATHEDRAL.— ITALL\N AR- 
» CHITECTURE AND SCULPTLTIE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 

After three months passed in the society of pictures 
and statues a man gets to be hke one who for three 
months has been invited out daily to dine ; — give me 
bread now and no more sweetmeats. 

We take the railway with a light heart, knowing at 
the terminus we shall find water, trees and veritable 
mountains, and that the landscape will no longer be 
merely three feet long and shut up within four margins 
of gold. There is relief in looking at a beautiful, 
fertile undulating country, where the white roads form 
ribbons amidst the green cultures. We reach Monza, 
an old and famous little town of the middle ages, and 
take good care not to go to see the ii'on-crown and the 
jewels of the Lombard queen Theodoline. Veritable 
antiquities and historic hric a hrac are let alone. There 
is far greater pleasure in strolling through tlie pretty 
streets ; the most one contemplates, in passing, is the 
fa9ade of the cathedral, of a gay Italian gothic, almost 
plain, where the elegant pulpit, half-ogive haK-classic, 
decked with shell niches and spiral columns, frames 
amongst its trefoils and ogives, the serious figures of 
apostles and saints. These graceful or beautiful forms 
leave in the mind a sort of poetic melody which lingers 
there whilst the feet stray about the streets. This little 
town, agreeable like those of our Touraine, does not seem 
hourgeoise hke these. We resume our carriage ; the 
eyes wander over the slopes covered with trees succeed- 
ing each other along the road leading to the ancient 
gates of Como. The hotels stand upon the shore, and 

16 / 



362 



LOMBAEDY. 



/ 



we see from tlie windows the great blue expanse losing 
itself afar in the golden evening atmosphere. A stock- 
ade protects the vessels, and the growing duskiness 
spreads its mistiness over the glittering waves. Night 
has come. In the universal darkness the mountains 
form a darker circle around the lake ; a lantern and 
some distant hghts vacillate here and there like sur- 
viving stars ; the coolness from the water comes in 
brought by a gentle breeze ; the port and the square 
are empty, and one feels himself protected and tran- 
quillized by the all-pervading silence. -^ 

In the morning we take a steamboat in order to 
make a tour of the lake, and for the entire day, without 
fatigue or thought, we swim in a cup of light. The 
shores are strewn with white villages, reaching down to 
dip their feet in the water; the mountains descend 
gradually, their pyramids being populated half-way up ; 
pale olive and round-topped mulberry trees stretch 
away in rows along the eminences, and summer-houses, 
framed in under a beautiful shade, extend their ranges of 
terraces down to the beach. Toward Bellagio myrtle and 
lemon trees and parterres of flowers form either white 
or purple bouquets between the two azure branches of 
the lake. But, as it retreats toward the north, the 
country becomes grand and severe ; the mountains rise 
high and become shattered; rigid seams of primitive 
rocks, indented crests white with snow, long ravines in 
which lie ancient strata of frost, emboss or furrow with 
their entanglements the uniform dome of the sky. Sev- 
eral lofty crags seem to be bastions ranged in a circle ; 
the lake was once a glacier, and the friction of its sides 
has slowly eaten away and rounded off the declivities. 
Within these inhospitable gorges there is no verdure or 
trace of life; man ceases to regard himself as on the 
habitable globe ; he stands in the mineral world an- 
terior to man, on a bare planet where his sole enter- 
tainers are stone, the atmosphere and water^ a vast 



COMO. S63 

pool the child of eternal snows ; around it is an assem- 
bly of grave mountains which dip their feet in its azure ; 
behind them is a second range of whitened peaks, still 
wilder and more primitive, like an upper circle of giant 
gods, all motionless and yet all different, as expressive 
and as varied as human physiognomies, but bathed in a 
warm velvety tint through distance and the vapory air 
and tranquil in the enjoyment of their magnificent 
eternity. The breeze having subsided the great lumi- 
nary of heaven, above the contracted horizon, flamed 
down with all its force. The blue of the lake became 
more profound ; around the boat undulations of velvet 
rose and fell unintermittingly, and in the hollows, be- 
tween the azured bands, the sun projected other moving 
bands like yellow silk spangled with sparks, v 

Como and the Cathedral. — It is in vain to have resolved 
to see no more works of art. They exist everywhere in 
Italy, and this little town has such a beautiful cathe- 
dral ! 

Nowhere have we found a happier union of the Ital- 
ian and the Gothic,"^ a more beautiful simplicity re- 
lieved here and there with the pleasing and the fanci- 
ful. The facade consists of the ordinary gable com- 
posed of two houses joined together, the one upper and 
the other lower, clearly defined by four perpendicular 
cordons of statues. You recognize the type and the 
bony framework of the national architecture such as 
Pisa, Sienna and Yerona created it in refashioning the 
basilicas. Although christian it is gay. Although the 
solid parts dominate there is no lack of finesse and 
variety. You feel the substance of the wall but it is 
embroidered, and embroidered harmoniously. Statues 
stand in shell niches, but each file of niches terminates 
in a highly foliated and elegant little canopy. The 
nudity of the fa9ade is diversified by a large rosace and 

* Begun in 1396, the fa9ade having been finished in 152G. 



364 LOMBAEDY. 

four liigli windows, and four files of niches and statues. 
In order to entirely break the monotony the artist has 
placed on the two flanks two grand projecting niches 
and in these stand an angel on one side and the Virgin 
on the other between pretty spiral columns capped 
with pointed pinnacles. Over the rose-window run 
two niches, one narrow and gothic containing a Christ, 
and the other wide, in which ogive and renaissance 
forms commingle, and where a second Christ, between 
the angel and his mother, seems to be bestowing a 
benediction on the entire structure. Still higher up, 
on the extreme and central peak, above this elegant, 
up-springing pyi'amid, you see arising like the crown of 
a candelabra, an exquisitely charming little openwork 
turret, four delicate stories of sculptured pilasters and 
Greek columns, elevated and tapered by a capping of 
gothic foliage and indentations. Nowhere have we 
seen a latin fagade in which the rich invention of the 
Eenaissance and the bewildering finish of ogival taste 
harmonize in more exquisite sobriety and with a liveher 
inspiration. 

But the renaissance spirit predominates. This is 
evident in the abundance and beauty of the statues. 
The pleasure of contemplating and ennobling the 
human form is the distinctive mark of this age in which 
man, freed from ancient superstition and misery, begins 
to feel his own power, to admire his own genius and to 
assume for himself the position of the gods under which 
he had humbled himself. Not only do cordons of 
statues bind together the four lines of the edifice and 
overlie each other above the rose-window, but the win- 
dows are bordered with them, the central door flanked 
and crowned and the curves of the three portals peo- 
pled with them. They are of the best epoch, and 
belong to the dawn of the renaissance."^ Their sim- 

* Two statues on the sides of the great door are dated 1498. 



ITALIAN SCULPTURE. 365 

plicitj, their gravity, their originality, their vigor of ex- 
pression testify to a healthy and youthful art. Several 
figures of young people in pourpoints and tight hose 
are chivalrous pages with legs somewhat slender, such 
as Perugino painted. Naive and semi-awkward airs, a 
too literal imitation of actual forms, undoubtedly indi- 
cate that the spirit has not yet attained to its full flight. 
Again some exaggerated attitudes and superabundant 
masses of hau' like those of Leonardo da Vinci, still 
announce the early excess and h'regular pulsation of 
invention ; — but the sculptor so fully appreciates life ! 
You realize that he discovers it, that he is enamored 
with it, that his soul is full of it, that a proud young 
man, or virginal and passive Madonna, suffice to wholly 
absorb him ; that varieties of head and of human atti- 
tude, the movement of muscles and of drapery, all the 
grandeur and all the action of the body are stamped 
on his mind through direct contact with it, through 
spontaneous comprehension and without academic tra- 
dition. From Ghiberti to Michael Angelo Italian sculp- 
ture multiplied its masterpieces ; its statuettes, its bas- 
reliefs, its jewelry form a complete world. If, in the 
larger and isolated statues it remains inferior to Grecian 
sculpture it equals it in subordinate statues and in 
general ornamentation. The statue thus regarded 
enters as a portion into a whole. The tops of the three 
doors of the facade are pictures like the bas-reliefs of 
Ghiberti ; a " Nativity," a " Circumcision," " the Ado- 
ration of the Magi," and, on the northern facade, a 
" Visitation" are displayed in complete scenes through 
a multitude of grouped figures and sometimes with a 
joyous profusion of arabesques the personages of which 
are themselves only a fi'agment. The northernmost 
door consists of an arc supported by two columns and 
two pilasters, as crowded and as blooming as the fron- 
tispieces of the books of the period. Naked children 
cling to the cornices, play with dolphins and bestride 



366 LOMBARDY. 

tlie goats, and others are blowing on bagpipes. Small 
marine cupids are shaking their serpentine tails among 
jumping frogs. Birds with outspread wings come to 
peck at the cornucopias. On the neighboring windows 
runs a frieze of large, expanded flowers, infantile bodies 
and grave medallions. All the kingdoms of nature, all 
the graceful and luxurious confusion of the fantastic 
and of the actual world wind and move about in stone 
like a pagan carnival in the gardens of Alcinous under 
the capricious and facile inventiveness of Ariosto. 
The architecture adapts itself to this elegant fes- 
tival ; it forms bijous to frame it in. The baptistery 
is a charming little marble pavilion whose small columns 
form a circle in order to support a round roof, protect- 
ing the sculptured vase containing the lustral water. 
The niches flanking the great entrance are trim little 
porticoes filled with delicate serpentine arabesques. 
One ought perhaps to state that the centre of art in 
the Renaissance is decorative art. Commissions in 
Greece came principally from the city which desired to 
have a memorial of its heroes and of its gods. Com- 
missions in Florence came especially from wealthy in- 
dividuals who craved ewers, ivory and ebony cabinets, 
plate, painted walls and ceilings and sculptured stucco 
in order to decorate their apartments."^ Art, in the 
former, was rather a public matter and therefore graver, 
simpler and better calculated to express calm grandeur. 
Here art is rather a private concern and therefore more 
flexible, less solemn, and more inclined to seek the 
agreeable, to excite pleasure and to proportion its 
dimensions and its inventions to the luxury of which it 
is the ministrant. 

* See the lives of Paolo Uccello, Dello, Yeroccliio, Pollaiolo, Dona- 
tello in Yasari. Painting and sculpture in the fifteenth century issue 
from the goldsmith's art. 



CHAPTEK Y. 

FROM COMO TO LAGO MAGGIORE.— DEVOTION. -EPICUREANISM.— THE 

♦ PEASANTRY, BOURGEOIS AND NOBLES.— POLITICAL DISPOSITIONS. 

—THE NECESSITIES OF ITALY.— LAGO MAGGIORE.— ISOLA MADRE. 

— ISOLA BELLA.— SCENERY.— ART AND NATURE.— THE ALPS AND 

THE SIMPLON. 

The country is beautiful, green and fertile and strewn 
with villages and countr j-li<iuses ; poplar avenues ex- 
tend down to the road and terminate in a circle of stone 
benches under a shade. The crops follow one after 
another under lines of mulberry -trees ; between these 
runs the slender stem of a vine, expanding its young 
leaves and traversed by sunlight. "Wheat, wine and 
silk compose everywhere a triple harvest on the same 
field. 

It is a fete day. The people are out of doors in their 
Sunday clothes. They do not look indigent ; their 
dwellings are in good condition ; the women wear 
shawls striped with white and red, black skirts falling 
in plaits, ear-rings, and a crown of silver pins which 
fasten their veils and hair. Summing up things in 
gross there is about the same degree of comfort as in 
Touraine. Most of the children, however, go barefoot ; 
the diligence horses are lean nags as in Provence, and 
a good many signs indicate the same neglect, ignorance 
and love of pleasure and the same superstition as in 
the south of France. Numerous Madonnas are seen, 
and alongside of them a notice to the wa3'farer to re- 
peat an Ave. Sometimes the walls represent the 
damned in the midst of flames, and bear an inscription 
advising the Hving to take heed. At Milan, in the 
cathedral, Jesus on a cross is surrounded by three or 
four small silver hearts ; repentant believers who have 



368 



LOMBAEDY. 



confessed and who are willing to say a Pater noster or 
an Ave at the choir, obtain a hundred years' indulgence ; 
if they are old or impotent they have only to send some 
one to do it in their place and thus derive no less bene- 
fit. One of my Yenetian friends regards the state of 
mind in his province as about the same ; the peasantry 
are devotees to the Holy Father ; however poor they 
may be they give their money for masses, their lively 
imagination offering a firm hold for the religion of 
rites. 

Hence it is that they are only very moderately patri- 
otic. In the late campaign our officers found them 
better disposed toward the Austrians than to the 
Piedmontese. The German administration had been 
orderly, lenient enough and even paternal for the 
peasantry ; these, unable to read and indifferent to 
politics entertained no bad feeling against Austria. 
When national pride and sentiment are wanting little 
does it matter if the master be a foreigner ; if he allows 
dancing, drinking, love-making and pays well for 
services, that suffices. A boatman, a shrewd fellow, as 
they almost all are, said to me, "The Austrians are 
clever folks ; they made a good deal of work, and there 
was more trade in their day. They were only ill-natured 
to the signori because the signori were always against 
them. Now the signori are satisfied ; — they have every- 
thing and their sons are officers. It is only the poor 
who are miserable ; none of the peasants have property ; 
the land all belongs to the rich. A day -laborer earns 
thirty cents a day, a kilogramme of meat costs eight}^- 
five centimes and we pay as many taxes as before." — 
This intelligent and sensuous race see but one object in 
life, that of pleasure and idleness. A country bourgeois 
tells me : " They would like to enjoy themselves and do 
nothing ;" they esteem a government the more accord- 
ing as they happen to enjoy under it more amusements 
and more leisure. 



LOMBARD PATRIOTISM. oo» 

To make amends the middle-class and the nobles, all 
who possess a cloth coat and read the newspapers, are 
enthusiastic for Italy. In 1848 Milan fought for three 
days and drove off the Austrians with its own forces. 
When the French, after the battle of Magenta, entered 
the city, their joy, gratitude and enthusiasm amounted 
to delirium. One soldier, at first, appeared, alone by 
himself ; the throng of people rushing forward to wel- 
come and embrace him was so great that he could not 
keep his feet ; his head went bobbing about and he 
staggered with exhaustion. Soon after this the ad- 
vanced battalions appeared. Young girls with their 
mothers ran through the streets embracing the soldiers 
and even the Turcos. These battalions remained a 
fortnight ; cafes, restaurants, all was given up to them ; 
they were not allowed to pay a cent. It was impossible 
for a resident to have a glass of ice-cream brought to 
him — everything being for the French ; it was impos- 
sible for a sick Milanese to procure a physician, as they 
were all attending on the wounded French. After the 
battle of Solferino the ladies visited them in the hospi- 
tals ; the private houses were all filled with them ; 
people even disputed their possession ; many of the 
captains on recovering wedded rich heiresses. It is not 
that the Austrians were brutal or insolent ; on the con- 
trary they were gentle, well brought up, refined and 
patient in the extreme. Through orders from their 
superiors the oiB&cers avoided duels ; they were jostled 
at the theatres and people trod on their toes ; but they 
kept silent ; otherwise they would have been compelled 
to fight every day. The national sentiment was intract- 
able toward them and it is so yet. Lately a Milanese 
lady, who had remitted money to the Pope, was recog- 
nized in her box in the theatre and hooted and whistled 
at until she was obliged to leave the house by a back- 
door. I peruse two or three newspapers every day, 
and I do not see one, except the " Unita," which is not 



S'^O LOMBARDY. 

patriotic. The caricatures of tlie Pope are brutal ; you 
see Death, holding a ball, bowling at him between the 
legs of the Emperor Napoleon; Death again is a 
gambler making an unexpected cast and delivering 
Italy. Garibaldi is admired, exalted, adored even in 
the meanest inn ; the conductor of the diligence shows 
me, at Yarese, the house in which he married his second 
wife, "the wicked one," and the wall of which he made 
his barricade. Nobody can give an idea of his popu- 
larity in Italy ; Joan of Arc enjoyed less in France. 
At Levano, I see on the wall of the cafe an inscription 
stating that the son of the proprietor died for his 
country in combating in Sicily by the side of the 
national hero. Every evening and afternoon, in the 
cafes, on the public squares, aU the semi-bourgeois, the 
shopkeepers, the clerks, read then- journal and discuss 
the plans of the ministers. To tell the truth they even 
discuss too much, and gratify themselves with words. 
These latin and southerly races seem to be composed 
of amateurs who, having a prompt conception and a 
facile tongue, soar and circulate above action without 
taking any part in it. They delight in argument for its 
own sake ; discussion provides them with an outlet for 
their oratorical humor ; political conversation forms a 
sort of opera seria the effect of which is enervating be- 
cause it is complete and all-sufficing. They do not 
investigate ; their pohtical journals are as much below 
ours as ours are below the English journals : they con- 
tain the superficial ebullitions of impulsive faculties but 
not the true reflections of solid science. They divert 
rather than exercise theu' minds ; but at this moment 
Italy has more need of works than of words. Financial 
matters are its stumbling-block. In order to become 
an independent people and a mihtary power it is neces- 
sary to pay more and therefore to labor and produce 
more. A person who establishes a manufactory, a land- 
owner who drains his grounds, an artisan who lengthens 



LAGO-MAGGIOKE. 371 

his day by an hour are at this moment its best citizens. 
The object is not to read newspapers and to declaim, 
but to dig, to manufacture, to calculate, to learn, to 
invent every wearisome, positive and confining occu- 
pation which the people would so gladly leave to 
northern blockheads. It is a sore trial to pass from 
an epicurean and speculative life to an industrial and 
militant life : the dilettant and the patrician seem to 
become serfs and wheels of a machine ; but the choice 
must be made. In aspiring to form a great nation it is 
necessary, in order to subsist alongside of others, to ac- 
cept the obligations others impose on themselves, that 
is to say faithful and regular labor, self-constraint, a 
discipline of the mind methodically devoted to fixed 
purposes, an enrolment of persons confined to one 
sphere and stimulated by competition, a loss of indiffer- 
ence, a diminution of gaiety, a mutilation and a con- 
centration of faculties, constant and stern effort, every- 
thing, in short, that separates an Italian of the last 
three centuries from a modern Englishman or Ameri- 
can. 

Lago-Maggiore, April 10th. If I had m}^ choice of a 
country-house I would take one here. From above 
Yarese where the road begins to descend, one sees at 
his feet a broad plain over which is spread out a series 
of low hills. The whole expanse is clothed wdth ver- 
dure and with trees, with fields and crops spotted with 
white and yellow flowers like a velvet Venetian robe, 
with mulberry-trees and vines, and, farther on, with 
bouquets of oaks and poplars, and scattered among the 
hills, with beautiful placid lakes, united and spreading 
out broadly and glittering like mirrors of steel. It is 
the freshness of an English landscape among the noble 
lines of a picture by Claude. The mountains and the 
sky impart majesty and the superabundant water im- 
parts moisture and grace. The two natures, that of the 
north and that of the south, here unite in a happy and 



372 LOMBAEDY. 

friendly embrace in order to combine tlie softness of a 
grassy park with the grandeurs of an amphitheatre of 
crags. The lake itself is much more varied than that 
of Como : it is not encased from one end to the other by 
naked and abrupt hills ; it has rugged mountains but 
also gentle slopes, the drapery of the forests and a 
perspective of plains. From Laveno you see its broad, 
placid surface, scattered with rays and damasked like a 
cuirass under innumerable scales in a blaze of sunshine 
traversing the dome of clouds ; scarcely does the light 
breeze impel a dying undulation against its gravelly 
shore. Toward the east a path winds half way up the 
bank among green hedges, blooming fig-trees, spring 
flowers, and every description of delightful perfume. 
The great lake opens out tranquil in full view ; the 
swelling sail of a small vessel is seen, also two white 
hamlets which at this distance seem to be the work of 
beavers. Mountains bristling with trees descend at 
long intervals to the water's edge, expanding their 
pyramids, their misty peaks half lost in the cloudy 
grayness. 

We take a boat at sunrise and traverse the lake in 
the transparent vapor of the dawn. It is broad like an 
arm of the sea, and its light waves of a leadeny blue 
shine feebly. The thin mist envelops both sky and 
water with its gray hue. By degrees it grows thinner 
and rises, and through its decreasing meshes penetrate 
the beautiful light and delightful warmth. Thus do we 
glide for a couple of hours in the soft and monotonous 
suavity of the half-transparent atmosphere stirred by 
the breeze as if by the gentle motion of waving plumes ; 
then it becomes quite clear and nothing is visible around 
us but azure and light ; the surrounding water seems 
to be a surface of wrinkled velvet, and the pure sky 
above a conch of glowing sapphire. Meanwhile a white 
spot appears, increases in size and becomes detached : 
this is Isola-Madre enwrapped in its terraces, the waves 



ISOLA BELLA. 373 

beating against its great blue stones and sprinkling its 
lustrous leaves with moisture. The boat draws near 
and we land. Aloes with their massive leaves and the 
Indian fig on the sides of the ledge are waving their 
tropical growths in the simshine ; avenues of lemon- 
trees wind along the walls while their green or ripe 
fruit clings close to the panels of the rock. Four series 
of foundations thus arise in stories under their decora- 
tions of precious plants. On the summit the isle con- 
sists of a tuft of verdure expanding its masses of leaves 
above the water, laurels, evergreens, platanes, pome- 
granates, exotic shrubbery, flowering glycines and 
blooming clusters of azalia. One walks along sur- 
rounded by coolness and perfume ; there is no one 
here but a custodian ; the island is deserted, seemingly 
awaiting some youthful prince and his fairy bride to 
screen their nuptials ; thus carpeted with tender grass 
and flowery shrubs it is simply a lovely morning rose, a 
white and violet bouquet around which hover the bees ; 
its immaculate prauies are starred with the primrose 
and the anemone ; peacocks and pheasants quietly pa- 
rade their golden robes starred with eyes or coated 
with purple, the undisputed sovereigns among a popu- 
lation of twittering and frolicsome birds. 

I was no longer capable of appreciating formal archi- 
tectural works, and especially the perverted forms and 
artificial decoration of Isola Bella ; its grottoes of rock- 
work and mosaic, its apartments wainscoted with pic- 
tures and filled with curiosities, its water-basins, its 
fountains appeared to me unsightly and made no im- 
pression. I gazed on the western and opposite shore, 
craggy and wholly green and which seems truly formed 
to please the eye. The lofty and tranquil mountains 
rise up in all their grandeur, and one longs to go and 
recline on then- turf}^ beds. Sloping fields of an incom- 
parable freshness clothe the near declivities. The nar- 
cissus, euphorbia and purple flowerets abound in the 



374 LOMBARDY. 

hollows; clusters of the myosotis open their little 
azure eyes and their tops tremble in the ooze of the 
springs. We see myriads of rills descending the hill- 
sides, tumbling about and intersecting each other ; 
diminutive cascades strew the grass with their pearly 
showers while rivulets of diamonds, collecting these 
scattered waters, flow on and discharge themselves into 
the lake. Here and there over this blooming freshness 
and these soft murmurings spreading oaks extend the 
lustre of their early verdure, mounting upward tier 
upon tier until, finally, their height disappearing, the 
sky, at the summit, is barred by their limitless layers 
and the indefinite colonnade of the forest. 

"We take the diligence at two o'clock in the morning. 
This is the last day of the journey ; nowhere is Italy 
more beautiful. Toward four o'clock an exquisite in- 
distinct dawn peers out from the night like the pale- 
ness of a chaste statue ; a remote opaline reflection 
rests on the heights and growing half-lights venture 
their pearly grays beneath the nocturnal blue. The 
stars glimmer but, otherwise, the atmosphere is dusky, 
while shadows similar to cloud-flocks creep along the 
ground. Our vehicle stops, and we cross a river in a 
ferry-boat. In this silence and in this total effaccment 
of objects the water is the only living thing, moving 
and stirring imperceptibly, its flowing surface rayed 
and glittering with small eddies intermingling between 
its dark banks. The trees, meanwhile, peer out 
through the haze, and the buds on their tops become 
visible enveloped in dew, awaiting, apparently, the 
completion of daylight. The sky becomes whiter, the 
dawn, meanwhile, extinguishing the stars ; on all sides 
both vegetation and plants come out in clear relief ; 
the gauzy veil grows thinner and thinner and finally 
evaporates ; their color reappears ; they are reborn 
with the light, and we feel the sweet wonder of creatures 
surprised to find themselves as they were the previous 



SCENERY. 375 

evening, again to resume their suspended life. The 
whole gorge is filled with them, while monstrous moun- 
tains, on the two sides of this scattered and charming" 
population, rise up like guardian giants in sombre 
masses indenting the luminous skj with their whitened 
brows. At length a flash issues from one of the rugged 
crests ; the sudden, dazzling jet pierces the vapor ; 
sections of verdure begin to brighten, the streams 
glow, and huge antique vines, the domes of the trees, 
delicate arabesques of clambering shrubs, all the luxu- 
riousness of a vegetation fed by the freshness of eternal 
springs and by the humid warmth of the rocks dis- 
plays itself like the attire of a fairy enveloped in her 
gauze of gold. 

No, it is not of a fairy here that we must speak but of 
a goddess. The fantastic is only a caprice and a mala- 
dy of the human brain ; nature is healthy and stable ; 
our discordant reveries have no right to be compared 
with her beauty. She is self-sustaining and self-devel- 
oping ; she is independent and perfect, active and serene, 
and that is all that can be said of her ; if we presume 
to compare her to any human work it must be to the 
Greek gods, to the august Pallas and the supernatural 
Jupiter of Athens ; she is self-sufficing as they are. 
"We cannot love her, our words fail to reach her ; she is 
be3^ond our grasp and indifferent ; we can only contem- 
plate her like the effigies of temples, mute and bare- 
headed, in order to impress ourselves with her perfected 
form and invigorate our fragile being in contact with 
her immortality. This contemplation alone is a deliv- 
erance. We escape from our turmoil, from our desultory 
and ephemeral thoughts. What is history but a conflict 
of unaccomplished efforts and abortive works ? What 
have I seen in this Italy but secular gropings of genius 
circumventing each other, disintegrating faiths and un- 
successful enterprises ? What is a Musee if not a cem- 
etery, and what is a painting or statue or piece of 



376 



LOMBAEDY. 



architecture if not a memorial which a passing genera- 
tion anxiously erects to itself in order to prolong its 
waning thought by a sepulchre as evanescent as this 
thought? On the contrary before heaven, amidst 
mountains and Avaters, we feel as if we stood in the 
presence of perfect and perennial beings. No accident 
has befallen them, they are the same as at the first day ; 
every year the same spring sends forth to them from 
copious sources pith and vigor ; our exhaustion is re-, 
stored by their might and beneath their tranquillity our 
restlessness subsides. In them appears the uniform 
power evolved by the variety and transformation of 
things, the great fruitful and genial mother whom 
nothing disturbs because beyond her there is nothing. 
Then from the soul departs an unknown and profound 
sensation ; its inmost recesses then appear ; the in- 
numerable Hues with which life has invested it, its 
wrecks of passion and of hope, all the human dross 
which has accumulated on its surface is dissolved and 
fades away ; it reappears in its simplicity ; it revives 
the instinct of former days, the vague montonous 
words which formerly placed it in communion with the 
gods, with those natural gods who live in all things ; it 
feels that all the words it has since spoken or heard are 
but confused babblings, a mental concussion, a street 
noise, and that if there is one healthy and desirable 
moment it is that when, quitting the vexations of its so- 
journ, it perceives, as venerated sages have said, the 
harmony of the spheres, that is to say the palpitation 
of the eternal universe. 

The road winds up the declivities, and toward Isella, 
the mountains become bare and crowded. Walls of 
cliff fifteen hundred feet high enclose the route within 
their defiles. Their yellow bases, blackened by the 
exudations of the springs, their towers, their chaos of 
deformed and corroded ruins, seem to be the crumbled 



SCENERY. 377 

masses of myriads of cathedrals. One vainly recurs to 
memory or to liis dreams for forms of tins kind ; you 
imagine some enormous trunk hacked by the axe of a 
blind colossus whose children, more feeble, afterward 
approach with pruning-hooks a hundred feet long and 
full of obstinate fury, in order to add other gashes to 
the mighty blows of their father. It would require 
similar rage and insanity to explain these grand pre- 
cipitous breaches, these sudden chasms, these over- 
hanging crests and needles, this monstrous wildness of 
disorder. Trains of tarnished frost creep about the 
hollows, each one melting and then flowing away ; thus 
on all sides do the streams collect and intersect each 
other, at one time sinuous and clinging to the brown 
sides, at another scattered in cascades and exposing in 
the air their feathery foam. In the distance smoke is 
ascending and the torrent fights its way grumbling be- 
tween the rocky palisades. 

We still ascend and the snow glitters between the 
peaks ; sometimes it whitens an entire declivity and 
when the sun shines on it its brightness is so vivid that 
the eyes are blinded by it. The defile widens and 
sloping fields spread out in their snowy shroud. All, 
however, is not barren : armies of larches climb in dis- 
order and with an air of resignation to the assault of 
the cliffs ; their fresh buds give them a peculiar yellow 
dress ; a few morose firs spot them with their black 
cones ; they mount upward in rows among dying trunks 
and bodies of mutilated trees and all the ravages of 
avalanches ; like the survivors on a battle-field they 
look as if they knew that they were still to fight again 
and were aware of all the suffering that awaits them. 
On the summit, near the hospice and village of the 
Simplon extends a mournful plateau ploughed with fur- 
rows all bedimmed with melting snows like an aban- 
doned, devastated cemetery. Here is the boundary 



378 LOMBAKDY. 

between two regions and it seems as if it w^ere the 
boundary between two worlds ; the dazzling peaks are 
lost in the whiteness of the clouds, so that one nc 
longer knows where the earth ends and where the sky 
begins. 



INDEX 



[See remarks preceding Index of volume on Kome and Naples.] 



'Abel sacrificing,' Byzantine, 194 

'Abraham andlhe Angels,' Byzantine, 
194 ; ' — expelling Hagar,' by Guercino, 
358 

Academy of the Fine Arts, Florence, 98 

Adam, Traditions of, 93 ; painted by 
Bandinelli, 146 

'Adam and Eve,' painted by Pietro 
d'Orvieto, 63 ; by Masaccio, 124 ; by 
Lombard!, 168 ; by Jacopo delta Quer- 
ela, 168 

'Adonis,' by M. Angelo, 145 

'Adoration of the Magi,' by Paul Vero- 
nese, -259 ; '— of the Shepherds,' by Pe- 
rugino, 11 

Albano, Stjde of, 175 ; 'Baptism of Christ,' 
17T 

Albergo, The, Venice, 323 

Alberti, Battista, Tomb of, 103 

Alexander VI., 15 

Alfieri, 77 ; Tomb of, 103 

Altichierri, 206 

Ammanati, Fountatu of, 88 

Anatomy, Study of. 120-2 

Angelico (Fra) da Fiesole, 8 ; Works of 
in Perugia, 9 ; Painter of Visions, 69 ; 
Inmate "of the Convent of San Marco, 
131 ; Life and Character, 131-3 ; Spirit 
of his Art, 133-9 

Angioli, Bartolo di Angiolino, 125 

Anjou, King of, 99 

'Annunciation,' by Fra Angelico, 9 ; by 
Perugino, 9 ; by Gian Nicola Manni, 
11 ; by Lombardi, 168 ; by Veronese, 
310 

Annunziata, Square of, 73 

'AuttEUS,' 93 

Antonelli, 31 

Apennines, The, 3 

'Apollo' in the Tribune, 1-39; Greek 
Statues of, 144 

'Apostles,' by Veronese, 310; by As- 
petti, 208, 2-23 

Architecture, Spirit of, 92 ; Gothic de- 
scribed, 315-6 ; Italian Gothic, 363-6 ; 
Lombard, .3.30 

Aretino, Portrait of, by Titian, 156 ; Let- 
ters, 1.58; Life. Character, and Quota- 
tions from, 287-93 ; Household of, 290 ; 
Love of Nature, 291-3 ; Friend of Ti- 
tian, 291-3 

Arezzo. Bishop of, 128 

'Ariadne and Bacchus,' 297 

Ai-istotle. 212, 215 

Arius, 106 

Arnolfo, 89 

Arnolfo di Lapo, Fountain by, 6 



Artists, Interpreters of their Age, 276 
Aspetti, 205 ; -Apostles' by, 208, 223 
Assisi, 8, 16 ; Schools of, 34 
'Assumption,' by Tintoretto, 254 ; by Ti 

tian, 305 
Ataulf the Goth, 195 
'Aurelia,' 22 
Austrians, Hatred of, in Venice, 258 ; in 

Lombardy, 368 
Avanzi, Jacopo. 206 
Averrhoeists, 66, 106 
Avignon, Popes of, 66 



'Bacchante,' 144 

'Bacchus,' by Michael Angelo, 145 

Bambaja. Sculptor, 347 

Bandinelli. 117, 146 

'Baptism of Jesus,' by Albano, 177; by 
Perugino, 10 : by Verocchio, 122 

Baptistery of Pisa', 61 ; of Florence, 93- 
7 ; of Ravenna, 194 

Baroche, 175 

Bartolomeo (Fra), Works by, in Pitti 
Palace, 158; in Uffizj, 159; Character 
of. 159 

Basilica. (See Churches.) 

Beccaria, 30 

Beccafumi, Works of, 47 

Beethoven, 150 

Bellini, John, 282 

Bembo, Cardinal, Tomb of, 207 

Benedetto Theatre, Venice, 255 

Benedict XL, Tomb of, 7 

Bettino dei Bardi, Tomb of, 104 

Bianco Capello, 153 

Bicci, Lorenzo, 69 

Biordo di Michelotti, 8 

'Blues,' 186, 188 

Boccaccio, 52 ; Poesy of, 67-8 

Bologna, Description of. 161 ; Churches, 
166 ; School of Art. ITl-S 

Bonifazio, Decorator of the Ducal Pal- 
ace, 223 : Works in the Academy, 
Venice, 309 ; 'Rendition of Verona to 
the Doge,' .339 ; 'Moses in the Bul- 
rushes,' 359 ; ' The Wicked Rich Man's 
Banquet.' 309 

Bordone, Paris, 252 

Botticelli. 117; painted by Masaccio 
125 \ Sentiment of, 130 

Braccio di Montone, S 

Braucacci Chapel, 123-4 

Briosco. Andrea. 209 

'Bronze Serpent,' by Tintoretto. 321 

Brosses, President dc, quoted, 142, '265-7 

Brother Bernardo, 26 ; — Currado, 26 



380 



INDEX. 



Bninelleschi. 91 ; Architect of the Duo- 
mo, 95 ; Goldsmith, 117 ; Designer of 
the Pitti Palace, 152 

Bruto, the Historian, 72 

Buffalmaco. 108 

Buondelmonti, Feuds of the, 84 

Byron, 180, 181 

Byzantine Art, 1S2-5 



c. 

'Cain and Abel,' by Pietro d'Orvieto, 
m ; by Titian, 308 

Cambio, 11, 14 

Campagna. the Sepulchre of Rome, 1-2 

Campanile of Florence, by Giotto, 92-3 ; 
of Venice, 219, 220 

Campo-Santo of Pisa, G2 

Canaletti, 220, 262 

Canova. 103 ; Monument of, 248 

Capponi, Marquis Gino, 79 

Caracci, The, 173 ; Ludovico, 173 ; Anni- 
bale, 173 ; Spirit of their School, 174 ; 
Angustino. 325, 358 

Carmine, Church of, 98 

Carpaccio, painter of ' St. Ursula,' 283 

Carraciulo, Tomb of, 347 

Carrari. Tomb of, 207 

Casanova, quoted, 265 

Cascine, The, 74 

Cassiodorus, 232 

Cathedral, Sienna. 42-8; Como, 363-6; 
of Milan, 345. (See Duomo.) 

Cavalcanti, 86, 101 

Cavour, 29 

Cecco d'Ascoli, 101 

Cellini— 'Perseus,' 87; Goldsmith, 117; 
quoted, 121 

Cerchi, The. (See Donati.) 

Championuet, 29 

Chapels— Brancacci, 123-4 ; Medici, 147- 
9: Miniscalco, 333; Pellegrini, 333; 
St. Felix, Padua, 206 

'Christ'— by Sodoma, 54 ; in the Duomo 
of Pisa, 60; by Pietro d'Orvieto, 63; 
in the Baptistery. Florence, 93 ; by 
Giotto : ' — with St. Thomas,' ' — Dis- 
puting with the Doctors,' 102 ; ' — at 
the Sepulchre,' 200 ; by Giottino, 104 ; 
by Domenichino, 176 : by Guido, 177 ; 
in Byzantine Art, 185, 194-5 ; Mosaic 
in St. Mark's, Venice. 241 ; '— on the 
Cross,' by Tintoretto, 323; in San- 
Zenone, Verona, 333 ; by Leonardo da 
Vinci, Milan, 350 

Church. The. Symbolized, 105-6 

Churches — Bologna : San Domenico, 
166; San Petronio. Constantinople; 
St. Sophia, 191. Florence : San Lo- 
renzo, 146-7 ; San Miniato, 75 : Santa 
Croce. 98, 103-4; Santa Maria No- 
vella, 98, 103-7. Milan : San Ambro- 
gio, 348 ; Santa Maria delle Grazie, 
350. Padua: San Antonio. 204-10: 
San Giustina, 203 ; Santa Maria dell' 
Arena, 200. Perugia : San Agostino, 
6. Ravenna : San ApoUinare,"i82 ; — 
in Classe, 196; San Vitale, 192-4; 
Santa Agatha, 194. Rome: San Gre- 
gorio, 142. Venice : Gesuati. 253 ; Ge- 
suiti. 253^; San Apostoli, 229; San 
Giobbe, 251 ; San Giorgio Masgiore, 
219, 229 ; Sau Giovanni e Paolo, 242 ; 



San Marco, 219; San Rocco, 316; San 
Mose, 229 ; Sau Luca, 229 ; Santa Ma- 
ria dell' Orto, 251 ; Santa Maria della 
Salute, 219. Verona: San Zenone, 
3;S3-5: Santa Anastasia, 332; Santa 
Maria I'Antica, 335. 

Cigoli, 175 

Cimabue, Works of, and Character, 98- 
100 

'Cleopatra,' by Guido, 158 

Climate, Effect of, on the Human Consti- 
tution and on Art, 274 

Codinup Curopalates, 187 

CoUeoni, Statue of in Venice, 242 

Commines, quoted, 279 

'Communion of St. Jerome,' by Augus- 
tino Caracci, 173 

Como, 361 ; Lake of, 362 ; Cathedral, 363 

Condottieri, 8 

Constantine, Persecutions under, 95 ; 
Society under, 192 

Constantinople, Society of, 186-92 

Contarini, Tomb of, 207, 277 

Corinne, 142 

Comaro, Luigi, Portrait of, by Titian, 156 

Corneille. quoted, 202 

'Coronation of the Virgin,' by Piero Pol- 
laiolo, 123 

Correggio. 354 ; 'Repose of the Virgin,' 
357; 'Flight into Egypt,' 141 

Corro, 86 

Cosimo, Piero di, 130 

Credi, 130 

Cremonini, Interpreter of Epicurus, 264 



'Dpsdalus,' 93 

'Daniel,' Byzantine, 196 

Dante, quoted, 19 ; Account of himself, 
22-3 ; Love of a Child, 24 : Genius of, 
91 ; on Poems of Chivalry. 94 : Tomb 
of, 103 ; Visions of Paradise, 134 ; at 
Padua, 200 

'David,' byDonatello, 143, 145; '—and 
Goliath,' by Titian, 308 

De Maistre, 78 

"Death,' by Piers Plowman, 67; Monu- 
mental Treatment of, 245 

Delacroix, compared with Tintoretto, 322 

Dello, 117, 119 

'Descent from the Cross,' by Titian, 303 

Desenzano, 342 

Diderot, 358 

Dino Campagni, 84-7 

•Diritto,' 36, 81 

' Discobuius,' 88, 144 

Discorso Aristocratico, quoted, 265 

Divine Comedy, quoted, 19-20, 23 

Dolce, 175 

Domenichino— 'Our Lady of the Rosary,' 
175 ; 'Martyrdom of St. Agnes.' 'Peter 
of Verona,' 176; Fidelity "to the Real, 
177 

Domini canes, 106 

Donatello— 'Judith.' 87 ; Decorator of 
the Campanile, 95 ; Goldsmith, 117 ; 
Pulpits by, 147 : Statue of Guattema- 
lata, 204 ; Bronzes by, 209 

Donati and Cerchi, Feuds of, S5-6 

Donati Gianotti, quoted, 285 

Ducal Palace, Venice, 219, 221 ; Painters 
in, 294 ; Ait of, 294-300 



INDEX. 



381 



Duccio. 51 ; Art of, and of contempora- 
ries, 5-2 

Dumas. 198. 256 

Duomo (The) of Pisa. 58-60 : of Florence, 
89-02 ; of Verona, 330-2; of Milan,345-6 ; 
ol Como, 363-6 



Epicurus, 264 
Erematani. Church of, 202 
Entvchians. The. 189 
'Eve,' bv Ghiberti, 96; by Baudinelli. 
146 ; by Tintoretto, 316 



'Faun,' in Tribune, 140 

Falconetto, 205 

Fedi, 153 

Fenice (La) Theatre. Venice, 256 

Ficin, 112. 128 

Filicaja. Tomb of, 103 

Filippino. 124 

'Fioretti.' 17. 131 

Flagellatoi-s of France, 66 

Flaubert, G.. 81 

'Fliirht into Egj-pt,' by Correggio, 141 

Floral Games, 188 

Florence— Contests in, 24: First Im- 
pressions of. 71^ ; Suburbs, 74-5 ; (see 
Society, Churches, Politics, &c.) 

Florian, Cafe, in Venice. 230 

Foligno— Ridicule of the Pope, 34 ; De- 
cline of Papal Supporters, 35 

'Fornarina." The, 140, 174 

'Fortune,' 67 

Fountain of Ammanati, 88 

Fourier. 214 

Franceschina. 289 

Francia— Goldsmith School, 117, 130; 
Works of, 171 

Francis, St.. 15 : Tomb of. 17-21 : Char- 
acter of. 21 ; painted by Cimabue, 99 ; 
'Marriace of with Poverty,' 101 ; 
painted^'by Giotto, 104, 205 

Frescoes — Campo-Santo, 62 ; by Loren- 
zetti, 63 ; by Spinello d'Arezzo. (i3 ; by 
the Orcagnas, 64-6 ; by Gozzoli. 69 : bv 
Giotto, 104, 200-2 ; by Taddeo Gaddi, 
104 ; by S. Memmi. 106 ; by Vasari, 
146 ; by Mantegna, 2U2 

Fi'oissart, quoted, 64 



o. 



Gabriello. Marco Trifone, type of the 
Patrician Ruler. 286 

Gaddi. Angiolo, 108 

Gaddi. Taddeo— Fresco bv, 104; 'Philos- 
ophv,' 106 : Views of Art, 108 

Galileo. Tomb of. 103 

Garibaldi — Number of Volunteers under 
him. 28 : Portraits of, 198 ; Popularity 
of. 258. 370 

Geloisa. 77 

Gesuiti, Church of the, 253^ 

Gesuati. Church of the, 253 

Ghiberti— Love of the Antique. 95 : 
Works, 96-7 ; Education in the Gold- 
smith's Art, 117 



Ghirlandaijo. 117; Works of, 127 

Gibbon, 94. 182 

Ginevra de' Benci, 128 

Gioberti, 78 

Giordano, Luca, 307 

Giorgone, 157 

Giotto— Painter of Visions. 20. 191 ; Cam- 
panile by, in Florence, 92-3 ; Character 
of, 100-2 ; Frescoes by, in Padua. 200-2 

Giottino, 104 

Giovanni di Bologna (see John of Bo- 
logna) 

Giovanni da Milano, 108, 205 

Giunta, painter of the oldest known 
picture. 49 

Goldoni, quoted. 264, 265 

Goldsmiths. School and Art of, 117 

Gozzi. quoted. 265. 268 

Gozzoli. Frescoes by, 69 

Granacci, 125 

'Greens,' 186. 188 

Gregory of Nazianza, IBS 

Grosso. Nanni , his esteem of Donatello's 
art. 121 

Guardi. 262 

Guariento, Portrait of, by Veronese, 339 

Guattemalata. Statue of. 204 

Guercino-Bolognese School. 175; Works, 
177 ; 'Abraham expelling Hagar.' 358 

Guido — 'Cleopatra.' 158 ; Bolognese 
School, 175 ; Works of, 177-8 

Gaido of Sienna, 49 



'Habakkuk,' bv Titian, 307 

Hegel. 198 

Heine. 22 

•Hell.' by Orcagna, 66 ; by Giotto, 200 

Hemling. 259 

'Hercules,' 93 ; by Pollaiolo, 122 

'Herodias.' by Gian Nicola Manni, 11 

Mosaic of, in St. Mark's, 241 
Hoche. 31 

Houssave, Amelot de la, quoted, 265 
Humanists. The, 114 
Humboldt, 211 
Huns, The, 189 



I. 



•Imitation of Jesus Christ,' 9, 133, lU 

Imperia. Tomb of 142 

Institute of the Fine Arts, Sienna, 52 

'Intermezzo' of Heine, 22 

Isaac. Tomb of the Exarch, 196 

Isola-Bella. 373 

•Israelites, The Ten Tribes of,' 210 



Jacomino of Verona, 200 

Jacopo di Casentino, 108 

.Jesuitic Taste. 205 

John of Bologna— Bronze Doors to Duo- 
mo of Pisa760 ; •Rape of the Sabines,' 
87 ; "Virtue triumphant overVice,' 146 ; 
•Neptune.' 169 

'Jt)hn the Baptist,' painted by Giotto, 104 

John of Pisa. 7 

•Judith," by Donatello, 87 



382 



INDEX. 



'Judith and Holofernes,' 209 
'Justice,' 222 
Jupiter, by Perugino, 11 
Justinian, 186, 189 ; depicted, 194 



K. 



King of Anjou, 99 



La Fontaine, 52 

Lago di Gar da. 342 ; — Maggiore, 371 

Landini, Ctiristotbro, 128 

'Last Judgment,' by Nicholas of Pisa, 
46 ; by Orcagna, 65 ; by Tintoretto, 312 

'Last Supper,' by Giotto, 102 ; by Tinto- 
retto, 320 

Laurati Pietro, 108 

'Lazarus,' Byzantine, 196 ; by Giotto, 202 

Leaning Tower of Pisa, 61 

Leo the Isaurian, 189 

Leonidas, by Perugino, 11 

Libraria, Sienna, 48 

Lido (The) of Venice, 225-6, 268-70 

Lippi, Works of, 124 ; Character, 127 

Loggetta of Sansovino, Venice, 220 

Loggia., 73 ; de' Lanzi, Florence, 87 ; of 
the Vatican, 97 

Longhi, 262 

Loredan Palace, Venice, 228 

Lorenzetti, 53 ; Fi-escoes by, 63 

Louis of Orleans, 64 

Louvre, Gallery of the, 14 

Love, 21-2 ; Lord of, 22 

'Love and Chastity,' painted by Peru- 
gino, 14 

Luigi, Count Piero, 257 

Luitprand, Bishop, quoted, 94 

Lynch Law, 87 

Lysippus, 88 

Luini— Pupil of da Vinci, 353 ; Works 
of, compared with Raphael's, 353, 355; 
with Leonardo's, 354; in the Brera 
Gallery, 355 

M. 

Machiavelli, Tomb of, 103 ; 'Prince,' 336 

'Madame Bovary,' 81 

'Madonna'— by Guido of Sienna, 49 ; Duc- 
cio, 51 ; Simone Memmi, 53 ; a Mediae- 
val Artist, 60 ; Rico of Candia, 98 ; 
Cimabue, 99 ; Giotto : 'Visitation of 
— ', 102,200; 'Coronation of—,' 104; 
Pollaiolo, 123; Story of, by Ghirlan- 
daijo, 128; Fra Angelico, 134; Statue, 
by M. Angelo, 149; Raphael: '— of 
the Goldfinch,' 140, '—of the Tribune,' 
154, ' — della Seggiola,' 154, 'Marriage 
of — ,' 356 ; Francia, 171 ; Annibale 
Caracci, 173 ; Domenichino, 176 ; Gui- 
do, 178 ; Byzantine, 185 ; Tintoretto, 
254; John Bellini, 282; on Tombs at 
Verona, 337-8 ; Luini, 355 ; Correggio, 
357 ; Titian, 'Nativity of — ,' 358 

'Magdalen,' by Giotto, 202 

Maier, quoted, 265 

Manetti, 118 

Manichseans, The, 189 

]\[anni, Gian Nicola, 11 

Mantegiia, 130 ; Frescoes by, 202 

Marco Corner, Doge, Tomb of, 244 

Marini, 153 

Marozzia, 60 



' Marriage Feast at Cana,' by Giotto, 201 , 
by Tintoretto, 318 

'Mars,' by Perugino, 11 

'Martyrdom of St. Agnes,' by Domeni- 
chino, 176 

'Mary Stuart,' by Schiller, played in 
Venice, 256 

Masaccio, 117; Character and Works 
of, 123-7 

Masolino, 124 

'Massacre of the Innocents,' by Tinto- 
retto, 321 

Matteo da Sienne, 53 

'Maudit,' Le, 36, 198 

Medicis, The, 111-116 ; Chapel of, 147-9 ; 
Statue of Lorenzo, 149; Traits of, 15^-4 ; 
Portrait of Cardinal Hippolyte, by Ti 
tian, 156 

Medusa, 88 

Meleager and his Dogs, 61 

Memmi, Simone, 53, 106 

'Mercury,' Greek, 144 ; by John of Bo- 
logna, 145 ; '— and the Three Graces,' 
by Tintoretto, 298 

Merode, M. de, '29, 31 

Metayer System, 80 

Michael Angelo, 7 ; 'Pieta' bv, 92 ; Tomb 
of, 103 ; Works in Medici Chapel, 147-9 ; 
Trials of, 149, 174 

Michelotti, Biordo di, 8 

Milan— Aspect of, 343 ; Women of, 343 ; 
the Cathedral, 345 ; Patriotism of, 369 

Miniscalco Chapel, 333 

Misson, 264 

Mocenigo, Doge, Character of, 279 

Modern States, 211-16 (see Society) 

Monastic Fervor, 26 

'Montjoie' of Octave Feuillet, 77 

Montanelli, 82 

Montanists, The, 186 

Monuments (see Tombs) 

Morando, Paolo, 339 

Morosini, Tomb of the Doge, 243 ; Fran- 
cis — , 262 

'Moses,' by M. Angelo, 150 ; ' — in the 
Bulrushes,' by Bonifazio, 359 

Murat, 29 



in. 

Naples, The Mastery of, 29 

Napoleon I., 211 

Napoleon in., 28, 29, 78 

Narni, 3 

'Nativity,' by Fra Angelico, 9 ; by Pe- 
rugino, 12 ; by Nicholas of Pisa, 46 ; 
by Giotto, 102; '— of the Virgin,' by 
Masaccio, 129, by Luini, 355, by Titian, 
358 ; '— of St. John,' by Masaccio, 129 ; 
'— of St. John the Baptist,' by L. Ca- 
racci, 173 

'Neptune,' by John of Bologna, 169 

Nereids, 88 

Nerval, Gerard de, 22 

Newspapers, Character of Italian, 78; 
La Pace, 78 ; of French, 79 

Niccolo deir Area, 167 

Nicholas V., Pope, 131 

Nicholas of Pisa— Tombs by, 7, 61; 
Pulpit by, 44-6 ; Birth, 49 ; Works of, 
116, 166 

'Niobe'— Sentiment of, 70 ; Hall of, 139 

' Nun,' The, by Leonardo da Vinci, 155 

'Nymph and Satyr,' by Giorgone, 157 



INDEX. 



O. 

Orcagna, Frescoes by, 64, 66 

Ortano Canal, 227 

Orvieto. 35. 36 

'Othello,' 77 

Otho of Frevsingen, 94 

'Our Lady of the Kosary,' 175; '— of 

Pitv; 178 
Overbeck, 27 
Oxford, compared with Venice, 218 



Pace, La. 78 

Padua— Aspect of, 198; the Prato, 198; 
(see Churches.) 

Palazzo — Perufjia : del Governo, 6 ; Flor- 
ence : Vecchio, 8-1, 146, — Pitti, 151-2 ; 
Sienna: Publico, 42; Verona: Pom- 
peii. 33S 

Palladio, 223 

Palma the Younger, 223 

Palma-Vecchio. T309 

'Paradise,' by Tintoretto, 223 

'Paradiso.' 22 

Parmegiano, 173 

Parodi, 205 

Pasqvale PaoH, 77 

'Passion,' The, by Nicholas of Pisa, 46 

'Peace,' 297 

Pecoroni. 67 

Pellegrini, 173 : Chapel, 333 

Perrault. Claude, 251 

'Perseus,' by Cellini, 87 

Perugia— Description of, 6 ; Feudal Con- 
tests. 8 ; Military Depredations in. '?A 

Perugino— Sentiment of the Art of, 8- 
12; Portrait and Character, 1:3-14; 
Originality of, 130, 171 

Pesaro. Doge, Tomb of, 247 

'Peter of Verona,' by Domenichino, 176 

Petrarch, 24, 67 

Phidias. 88 

Philip n. of Spain, Portrait by Titian, 
156 

Photius, 186 

Piazza— Florence : — della Signoria, 84, 
— Annunziata, 73 ; Venice: — di San 
Marco, 219-20 

Piers Plowman, quoted. 67 

'Pieta, bv M. Angelo, 92, 150 

Pietro d'Or%ieto. 63 ; — di Cortona, 153 

Pinturicchio, 48, 130 

Pisa, Maritime Importance of, 49; Aspect 
of, 56 ; Duomo, 58-60 

Pisani, 277 

'Piscine Probatique,' by Tintoretto, 319, 
322 

Pistoija, 160 

Pius il., History of, painted by Pintu- 
ricchio, 48 

Placidia, in Byzantine art, 195 

'Plenty,' 297 

Politian, 128 

Politics— Of Italy in general, 28-36, 179- 
80: Garibaldi, 28: Napoleon, 28; Pa- 
triotism of Women. 29; Policy of 
Piedmont toward Naples, 29 ; Nature 
of the Revolution, ;30, «0 : Anecdotes 
of Popular Sentiment, 31-3 : Feeling 
against the Priests, 3:3-4 ; Estimate of 
the Clergy, 36 ; of Florence. 78-9 ; of 
Constantinople under the Emperors, 



186-92: Number of Citizens enjoying 
Political Rights in the XVI. Century, 
212 : of Venice, 257 ; of Lombardy. 
367-71 

Pollaiolo, 117. 122. 125 

Pope, The, Caricatures of, 78, 370 ; Per- 
severance of. 82 

Poi'denone. 223 

•Power.' 222 

Prato. The, of Padua. 193. 203 

•Presentation of the Boy Jesus,' by Cas- 
paccio. "284; '—Virgin,' by Titian, 304 

Press, The. (See Newspapers.) 

Primaticcio, 88 

Procopius, 187 

Procuraties, The, Venice, 230 

Prode cV Italia, Un, 77 

'Prophets,' by Perugino, 11 

Provence, 3 

Pulci, 125 

a. 

Quercio, Jacopo della, 117 



'Rape of Europa,' by Veronese, 300 

'Rape of the Sabines,' by John of Bo- 
logna, 87 

Raphael. 11 : Development of, 15 ; in 
relation to Giotto. 103, 202 ; his Pagan- 
ism, 154-5 ; Portraits by, 156 ; 'Saint 
Cecilia,' 170 ; 'Marriage of the Virgin,' 
356 

Ravenna, General Aspect of, 180-1 ; By- 
zantine Character of, 182. (See 
Churches.) 

Religion, Difference between the Spirit 
of Protestant and Catholic, 35 ; of the 
Venetians, 265 

Ren an, 198 

'Repast at the House of Levi,' by Vero- 
nese. 310 

'Repose of the Virgin,' by Correggio, 
357 

'Resurrection,' by Tintoretto, 321 

Revolutions. (See Politics.) 

Rico of Candia, 98 

Ricci, Guido, 53 

Riccio, 205 ; Candelabra by, 208 

Ridolfi, Lives by. 301 

Rio, quoted, 13, 353 

Rizzo, 222 

Robbia, Lucca della. 117 

Romanes, The Torments of the, 24 

Roselli, 130 

Rosmini, 78 

Rosso, S8 

Rothschild, 110 



Sabellius, 106 

Sacchetti, 67, 108 

'Samson," -209 

Sansovino. 2-23 : Decorator of San Anto- 
nio, Padua, -205 : Loggetfa of in Ven- 
ice, 2-20 ; Staircases by, 222 ; other 
works, 2^23 

Sanudo, 259 

Sarpi, Paolo, 78 

Sarto, Andrea del, 117 ; Sentiment of the 
Art of, 158 



384 



INDEX. 



Savonarola, 13-14, 72, 131 

'St. Barbara," 53 ; bv Palma VeccMo, 310 

St. Bernard, Authority of, 66 

'St. Catherine.'' by Sodoma, 54 ; by Cim- 
abue, 99 ; Visions of, 66 

'St. Cecilia,' by Raphael, 170 

'St. Christopher,' by Titian, 297 

St. Dominic, Tomb of, 106 

'St. Ephesiis,' bv Spinello d'Arezzo, 63 

St. Felix, Chapel of at Padua, 206 

St. John—'— the Evangelist,' by Giotto, 
104; '—the Baptist.' by Ghirlandaijo, 
128 ; Byzantine, 195 ; by Raphael, 140 ; 
by Donatello, 143 ; by Guido, 177 

'St. Joseph and the Virgin,' by Perii- 
gino, 9 

'St. Lawrence, Martyrdom of,' by Ti- 
tian. 255 

St. Mark— Convent of in Florence, 98 ; 
Paintings of by Fra Bartolomeo, 158 ; 
t»y Tintoretto, 222. 314-16; Church: 
Object in the Landscape, 219, 227; 
Compared with St. Sophia, 236 : Art 
of, 237, 241 ; Interior, 238-240 ; View 
from Tower, 270 ; Library of, 270 ; 
Fete of, 238 

'St. Mary Magdalen,' 98 

'St. Petronius.' by M. Angelo, 167 

St. Pierre, Abbe de, 8 

'St. Roch among the Prisoners,' by Tin- 
toretto, 323 

'St. Sebastian.' by Perugino, 11 ; by 
PoUaiolo, 122 

St. Sophia. Church of. 191 

St. Thomas, Patron of the Church, 105- 
6 : in Bvzantine Art, 195 

St. Trophine, Cloister of, 348 

'Saint Ursula,' painted by Carpaccio, 
28:^-4 

'St. Vincent,' painted by Fra Bartolo- 
meo, 159 

Saint-Dedier, quoted, 265, 267 

Sainte ChapeUe, 19 

San Agostino, Perugia, 6 

San Ambrogio, Milan, 348 

San Antonio. Padua, 204-10 

San Apollinare, Ravenna, 182 ; — in 
Classe. 196 

San Apostoli, Venice, 229 

San Domenico. Bologna, 166-7 

San-Giobbe, Venice, 251 

San-Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, 219, 229 

San Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, 242 

San Giustina, Padua, 203 

San Gregorio, Rome, 142 

San Lorenzo. Florence, 146-7 

San Luca, Venice, 229 

San Marco. (See St. Mark.) 

San Micheli, Architect, 331 

San Miniato, Florence, 75 

San Mose, A^enice, 229 

San Petronio. Bologna, 168 

San Rocco, Venice, 316 ; Scuola of, 317- 
319 

San Vital e, Ravenna, 192-4 

San Zenone, Verona, 333-5 

Santa Agatha, Ravenna, 194 

Santa Anastasia, Verona, 332 

Santa Croce, Florence. 98, 103^ 

Santa Maria I'Antica, Verona, 335 

Santa Maria dell' Arena, Padua, 100 

Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, 350 

Santa Maria Novella, Florence, 98, 103- 
107, 127 

Santa Maria dell' Orto, Venice, 251 



Santa Maria della Salute, Venice, 219 

Scaligers, Tombs of the, 336 

Scamozzi, 223 

Sciences, Progress of the, 212-15 

'School of Athens,' 97 

Scott, Walter, 77 

Sculpture, Comparison of Greek and 
Modern, 145 

Severus, 189 

'Shower of Manna,' by Tintoretto, 319 

'Sibyls,' by Perugino, 11 ; by Guercino, 
141 

Sienna, Caricatures sold in, 36 ; Scenery 
of and Municipal History, 40-2; Ca 
thedral, 43-8. (See Society and 
Churches.) 

Signorio, Cane, Sepulchre of, 336 

Signorelli, Luca. 121, 130 ' 

'Six Saints,' by Titian, 308 

Society— in Florence during the Middle 
Ages and the Renaissance. 24-5, 71-2, 
84-7, 149 ; Traits of the Italian People, 
35-7, 81-2, 162-6 ; Nature of the Social 
Fabric, 38 ; in Sienna. 41 ; Repressive 
Effect of Modern, 49-50 ; Siennese En- 
thusiasm for Art. 51 ; Changes of in 
Tuscany, 108-10; the Modern Eng- 
lishman, 144 ; the Modern English- 
woman, 164 ; in Constantinople, 186- 
92; Modem Development of, 211-16; 
Venetian, 233-6, 267-9, 262-8, 275-7; 
Described by Aretino, 287-93 : in Mil- 
an, 343 ; of Lombardy m general, 
367-71 

'Socrates,' by Perugino, 11 

Soderini, 125 

Sodoma, 54 

'Solomon.' 210 

Sovfis of Persia, 25 

Spinelli, Parro, 69 

Spinelli Spinello, 53 

Spinello d'Arezzo, Frescoes by, 63 

Stendhal, 343 

Stilicon, Tomb of, 349 

Strauss, 198 

T. 

Taddeo Pepoli, 167 

Tarass Boulba. Story of, 24 

Tartegno, Monument of, 167 

Tasso, 174 

Taurica, Barbarians of the, 148 

Taxation in Venice, 257 

'The Wicked Rich Man's Banquet,' by 
Bonifazio, 309 

Theatres— Venice : Benedetto, 255; La 
Fenice, 256. Florence : Opera, 76 ; 
Nicolini, 77; Management and Per- 
formances. 76-7; Venice. 255-6 

Theodora, 60, 187, 188 ; Depicted, 193 

Theodoric. Tomb of at Ravenna, 181 

Theophilus. Emperor, 188, 191 

Tiepolo. 262. 265 

Tintoretto— 'St. Mark,' 222, 223, 314-16" 
'Crucifixion,' 250, 317, 324; 'Eve,' 316 
'Worship of the Golden Calf,' 251, 312 
'Last Judgment,' 312 ; Last Supper, 
320; Works in the Ducal Palace 
296-9 ; Compared with Veronese, 299 
Life and Character, 312-14; His Ge- 
nius, 317-18; Originality of, 319 
'Marriage of Cana,' 318; 'Piscine Pro 
batique,' 319, 322; 'Shower of Manna, 
319 ; 'Resurrection,' 321 : 'Massacre of 



INDEX. 



385 



the Innocents,' 321 ; 'St. Roch anions^ 
the Prisoners,' 323 ; Works in the Al- 
berto, 323 

Titian— 'Venus.' 141 ; Portraits by, 15G ; 
'Mistress.' 158; Monument, 248; 'St. 
Peter Martyr,' 249 ; Reproached by 
Vasari. 273: Character, 301—3: -De- 
scent from the Cross,' 303 ; 'Visita- 
tion.' 303 ; 'Presentation of the Vir- 
gin,' 304; Fidelity to Nature, 300-7; 

'flabakkuk,' 308 ; 'David and Goliath,' 
'Abraham and Isaac,' 'Cain and Abel,' 
'Passage of the Red Sea,' 'Six Saints,' 
308 ; itomage to Veronese, 341 

Tombs— Of Battista Alberti, 103 ; Alfie- 
ri, 103 ; Bettino dei Bardi, 104 ; Bene- 
dict XT., 7; Bembo, 207; the Carrari, 
207; Canova, 248; Dante, 103; Fili- 
caija, 103 ; St. Francis, 17-21 ; Galileo, 
103 ; Imperia, 142 ; Exarch Isaac, 190 ; 
Marco Corner, 244 ; Machiavelli, 103 ; 
Michael Angelo, 103 ; Doge Morosini, 
243; Doge Pesaro, 247; St. Dominic, 
160 ; Scatiijers, 330 : Cane Signorio, 336 ; 
Stilicon, 349 ; Tartegno, 107 ; Theodo- 
ric, 181 ; Titian. 248 ; Doge Valier, 247 ; 
Vendremini, 246 ; Antonio Venner, 
M4 ; Countess Zamoiska, 103 

'Transfiguration,' by Perugino, 11 ; by 
Raphael, 103 ; by L. Caracci, 173 

Trebonius, 187 

Tribune in the Uffizj, 139 

THsagion, 189 

Tritons, 88 

'Triumph of Death,' by Orcagna. 64 

'Triumph of Venice,' by Paul Veronese, 
223 

'Tubal Cain,' 93 

Tullio Lombardo, 205 

Turriano, Tomb of, 337 

Turrita, jacopo da, 49 



ITberti, The, 84 

Uccello, Paolo, 117, 118 

Ufflzj Gallery, 98 ; Contents of, 138-46 

Ugolino, 148 



V. 

Valentine Visconti, 64 

Valier, Doge, Tomb of, 247 

Van Dyck, 140 

Van Eyck, 11 

Vasari— Quoted, 14, 57, 99, 100, 102, 123 ; 
Works of, 140 ; on Titian, 273, 366 ; on 
Antonello da Messine, 275 

Velano, 209 

Velasquez, Sketch of, in Milan, 300 

Vendee, La, 30 

Vendetta, The, 86 

Vendramini, Doge, Tomb of, 246 

Venice — Suburbs of and general aspect, 
217-230; Grand-Canal, 219-268; Ab- 
sence of the Conventional in, 221 ; 
Streets and Squares of, 22S-;30, 261 ; 
History of. 231-t) ; Conquests of, 234-6 ; 
Influence of Oriental Art, 236 ; Monu- 
ments of the Doges, 243-9 ; Light and 



Atmosphere of, 252-3 ; Theatres, 255-6 ; 
The Giudecca, '257 ; Taxation, 257 ; 
Slaves' Quay, 260; Decline of, 262; 
Courtezans, 265-C ; The Lido. 268-70 ; 
Climate and Soil, 272 ; Compared with 
Flanders, 273-6 ; Ancient Heroism of, 
277 ; Independence of, 278 ; Academy 
of the Fine Arts, 281, 309 ; Patrician 
Sentiment, 285 ; Amusements of the 
'Magnilici,' 287 j Aretino, 287-93; Al- 
bergo, 323 ; Spirit of Venetian Art, 
326-7 

'Venice Queen,' by Veronese, 299 

Venner, Antonio, Doge, Tomb of, 244 

'Vernes,' by Botticelli, 130 ; '— de Med- 
icj,' 140; '—with the Doge,' by Titian, 
141 ; Greek, 144 

Verocchio — Begins as Goldsmith, 117 ; 
Statue of a cTiild. 146 ; Works in San 
Lorenzo, 147 ; Statue of CoUeoni, 242 

Verona— Aspect of, 328; The Amphi- 
theatre, 329 ; Lombard Architecture 
of. 330 ; the Duomo, 330 ; Paintings in, 
338-41 ; (see Churches.) 

Veronese, Paul — Angels in San Giustina, 
204; Decorator of the Ducal Palace, 
223; 'Adoration of the Magi,' 259; 
^ Ch'isailles ,'' 295; Character of his art, 
299 ; 'Rape of Europa.' 300 ; 'Repast at 
the House of Levi,' 'Apostles on the 
Clouds,' 'Annunciation,' 310; Portrait 
of Pasio Guariento, 339 ; 'Music,' 340 ; 
Homage of Titian, 341 ; Works in the 
Brera,^358 

Vesale, Andrea, Portrait of, by Titian, 
156 

'Vie de Jesus,' 36, 198 

Victor Emmanuel, 78 

Victor Hugo, 198 

Villani. The, 67 

Vinci, Leonardo da, 53, 117, 122; 'The 
Nun,' 155 J 'Mona Lisa,' 156, 3.54; 
Works of, in Milan, 350-3 ; 'Last Sup- 
per,' 350; 'Duke Sforza,' 351 ; Studies 
in the Brera Gallery, 351 ; in the Am- 
brosian Library, 351 ; Compared with 
Raphael and M. Angelo, 351-2; Influ- 
ence of on Contemporary Artists, 353 

Virgil, 2 

Virgin, The. (See Madonna.) 

Virginia de Leyva, 156 

'Virtue triumphant over Vice,' by John 
of Bologna, 140 

'Virtues,' by Pordenone, 223 

'Visitation,' by Titian, 303 

'Vision of Ezekiel,' by Raphael, 155 

'Vita Nuova,' 22 

Vitruvius, 222 

Vivarini, The, 281 

Voltaire, 78 

w. 

White Penitents of Italy, 66 
Wellington, Duke of, quoted, 274 



z. 

Zamoiska. Countess, Tomb of, 103 
Zeno, Carlo, 277, 279 



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